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Mount Olive, IL |
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Mount Olive is best known as the resting place of Mother Jones, hero to union workers who toiled in the coal mines of Macoupin County. It also serves as the home to one of the state's best preservation efforts: Soulsby's Shell Station on the south end of the two-lane alignment.
Soulsby's was one of the longest operating service stations on the Mother Road, in operation from 1926 until the early 90's. Owner Russell Soulsby inherited the station from his father Henry, who constructed it in order to have a business to pass on to his son, and the landmark would pump gas until 1991, almost fifty years after the Route 66 designation had been removed from the pavement in front of it. Soulsby was trained in the Army as an electronics repairman and for years he used the north side of the station to run a second business of servicing the community's radios and televisions.
Along with the bright reds and yellows of the recent refurbishment, the most striking feature of the Soulsby's Station is on the south side of the property where the repair rack shares its space quite intimately with an oaktree. With no room inside for automobile service, repairs were done on the steel ramp outside, and over the years a tree began to grow up between the tire rails on the rack. To this day it still rises up out of the middle, forbidding any modern automobiles from venturing up onto it and giving this Mount Olive landmark yet another signature Route 66 quirk.
Just to the north of town between the four-lane Route 66 bypass and the heart of the community is the Union Miners Cemetery, home to the gravesite of Mother Jones. The Irish-born Jones was deeply involved in the United Mine Workers Association in the early years of the 20th century, including a strike in West Virginia in 1913 where her arrest prompted Congress to begin an investigation into conditions in the mine. After her death in 1930 she was laid to rest in Mount Olive amongst the union miners she had fought along with, including many of the victims of the 1898 Virden Riot in which mine workers from all the communities surrounding Virden gathered together to forcibly prevent the importation of almost two-hundred African American scab workers recruited from Alabama, a fight that grew so violent that Illinois Governor John Tanner was forced to declare martial law and send troops into the area to help bring peace. All of the public schools and every business in Mount Olive closed on the day of the funeral procession through town.
The original two-lane route follows Illinois Street and 5th Street through Mount Olive, with this original 1930 alignment barely glancing the western and northern borders of community's street grid. At the southwest end of town the two-lane, traveling northeast along the Norfolk Southern railline, curves to due north to become Illinois Street, and the at the north end of the village curves to the east onto Fifth. It rejoins the railroad at the east edge of town and once again heads northeast towards Litchfield.
Starting in 1944, the four-lane bypass took a milder curve around the town. Just over a mile south of town where the two-lane ducked under a train trussel carrying the Norfolk Southern line, the four-lane continues to head north as the two-lane splits off to the northeast into town. The four-lane alignment continues north, lying less than a mile west of the village, until just west of the cemetery where it bends gradually to the northeast to meet up with the older two-lane corridor.
One fun oddity in Mount Olive's four-lane alignment is found at the train trussel to the southwest. This is the spot where the four-lane leaves Interstate 55 (the modern freeway was built on top of its predecessor from Mount Olive south to Collinsville) and right after we see its old pavement for the first time in miles it immediately becomes a two-lane to duck under the train tracks: four-lane traffic was forced to merge into two lanes in order to make it under the bridge. On the north side of the trussel the lanes immediately diverge once again.
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Mount Olive, IL |
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County: Macoupin, IL
Soulsby's was one of the longest operating service stations on the Mother Road, in operation from 1926 until the early 90's. Owner Russell Soulsby inherited the station from his father Henry, who constructed it in order to have a business to pass on to his son, and the landmark would pump gas until 1991, almost fifty years after the Route 66 designation had been removed from the pavement in front of it. Soulsby was trained in the Army as an electronics repairman and for years he used the north side of the station to run a second business of servicing the community's radios and televisions.
Just to the north of town between the four-lane Route 66 bypass and the heart of the community is the Union Miners Cemetery, home to the gravesite of Mother Jones. The Irish-born Jones was deeply involved in the United Mine Workers Association in the early years of the 20th century, including a strike in West Virginia in 1913 where her arrest prompted Congress to begin an investigation into conditions in the mine. After her death in 1930 she was laid to rest in Mount Olive amongst the union miners she had fought along with, including many of the victims of the 1898 Virden Riot in which mine workers from all the communities surrounding Virden gathered together to forcibly prevent the importation of almost two-hundred African American scab workers recruited from Alabama, a fight that grew so violent that Illinois Governor John Tanner was forced to declare martial law and send troops into the area to help bring peace. All of the public schools and every business in Mount Olive closed on the day of the funeral procession through town.
