The Mother Road offers amazing sights as it winds through Illinois

•June 27, 2018•

By The State
Journal-Register staff

Perhaps it is the yearning for yesteryear that endears so many to Route 66.
Who wouldn’t want to jump into a classic car and explore the United States, stopping at shiny new service stations to pump gas into your vehicle, or sip a cold drink from the soda shops that dot the roadway? Such sepia-toned wishes of driving the Mother Road in its heyday could prompt many of us to start packing for a trip.
Ford had been mass-producing vehicles for a little more than a decade when Route 66 was commissioned on Nov. 11, 1926. It was one of the original highways within the U.S. Highway System, its 2,448 miles starting in Chicago before arriving on the West Coast in Los Angeles (and later the Santa Monica Pier).
By 1985, Route 66 had been removed from the federal highway system, as the entire road had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System.
But it’s still possible to get an idea of what the roadway looked like: Just stop in Lexington to take a trip down “Memory Lane,” a 1-mile stretch of the original 1926 alignment of Route 66 pavement. It was turned into an interpretive trail and is open year-round to pedestrians and bicycles. There, people can delight in the restored vintage billboards and signage.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.