From Grant Park you can start your journey west to California on Route 66. This web site is set up with the more traditional east to west view of Route 66. Historically Route 66 is thought of as a highway that starts in the east and heads west and who am I to change that perception? These pages are set up as if you are driving the Mother Road in that direction. From Grant Park Historic Route 66 starts at Adams Street exactly in front of the Chicago Art Institute. For the purist though I have to mention that Adams Street was never really Route 66, it’s just the one way street going west from Grant Park. The Begin Historic Route 66 sign is located here. Travel Adams Street west for about 2.5 miles then make a left onto Ogden Avenue. You are now back on the original Route 66 heading west to Cicero, Berwyn and Lyons. From Lyons Interstate-55 runs along over the old original alignment of Route 66. At Boilingbrook you can leave the Interstate and continue your journey on the original 1940-1977 alignment of Route 66 through the small residential community of Romeoville south of Chicago. The image of the open highway that Route 66 presents becomes a reality once you pass Joliet.
U. S. Highway "Route" 66 was commissioned in 1926, the year U. S. numbered highways came into existence. It consisted of a 'collection" of two-lane concrete or asphalt paved roads extending from Chicago to Santa Monica, running through the states of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Route 66 is considered the "Mother Road" of American highways. The old "Main Street of America" was deactivated in 1984 and the U. S. 66 highway shields taken down, after being replaced by the modern interstate highway system.
This
is near Winslow, AZ many years ago.
The romance of Route 66 continues to captivate people around the
world. Running between Chicago and Los Angeles, “over two thousand miles all the
way” in the words of the popular R&B anthem, this legendary old road passes
through the heart of the United States on a diagonal trip that takes in some of
the country’s most archetypal roadside scenes. If you’re looking for great
displays of neon signs, rusty middle-of-nowhere truck stops, or kitschy
Americana, do as the song says and “get your kicks on Route 66.”
But perhaps the most compelling reason to follow Route 66 is to experience the road’s ingrained time line of contemporary America. Before it was called Route 66, and long before it was even paved in 1926, this corridor was traversed by the National Old Trails Highway, one of the country’s first transcontinental highways. For three decades before and after World War II, Route 66 earned the title “Main Street of America” because it wound through small towns across the Midwest and Southwest, lined by hundreds of cafés, motels, gas stations, and tourist attractions. During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of farm families, displaced from the Dust Bowl, made their way west along Route 66 to California, following what John Steinbeck called “The Mother Road” in his vivid portrait, The Grapes of Wrath. After World War II, many thousands more expressed their upward mobility by leaving the industrial East, bound for good jobs in the suburban idyll of Southern California—again following Route 66, which came to embody the demographic shift from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt.
Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing gradually over the next 25 years, old Route 66 was bypassed section by section as the high-speed Interstate highways were completed. Finally, in 1984, when the last stretch of freeway was finished, Route 66 was officially decommissioned; the old route is now designated Historic Route 66.
Though it is no longer a main route across the country, Route 66 has retained its mystique in part due to the very same effective hype, hucksterism, and boosterism that animated it through its half-century heyday. It was a Route 66 sight, the marvelous Meramec Caverns, that gave the world the bumper sticker, and it was here that the American art of driving tour as first flourished. Billboards and giant statues along the highway still hawk a baffling array of roadside attractions, tempting passing travelers to swim alongside giant blue whales, to see live rattlesnakes and other wild creatures on display in roadside menageries, or to stay at “Tucumcari Tonight—2,000 Rooms.”
The same commercial know-how and shameless self-promotion has helped the towns along the old route stay alive. Diners and motels play up their Route 66 connections, and many bona fide Route 66 landmarks are kept in business by nostalgic travelers intent on experiencing a taste of this endlessly endangered American experience. That said, many quirky old motels and cafés hang on by a thread of hope, sit vacant, or survive in memory only—all for want of an Interstate exit. In fact, of all the roads covered in this book, Route 66 has perhaps been the most impacted by the modern Interstate world; for many stretches you’ll be forced to leave the old two-lane and follow the super slabs that have been built right on top of the old road.
Route 66 passes through a marvelous cross-section of American scenes, from the golden sands and sunshine of Los Angeles, past the Grand Canyon and the Native American communities of the desert Southwest, to the gritty streets of St. Louis and Chicago. Whether you are motivated by an interest in its history, feel a nostalgic yearning for the good old days the route has come to represent, or simply want to experience firsthand the amazing diversity of people and landscapes that line its path, Route 66 offers an unforgettable journey into America, then and now.