Route 66 Turns 100: What It Means for Granite City

Route 66 wasn't designed like the interstates that replaced it. It wasn't built to bypass communities - it was built to connect them.

When Congress enacted the Federal Highway Act in 1925, Cyrus Avery of Tulsa and John Woodruff of Springfield lobbied hard for a Chicago-to-Los Angeles route that would link rural communities to major cities. The route they championed was designated "66" on November 11, 1926 - after a bureaucratic squabble over the more prestigious number 60.

The highway they created was different from anything that came before. It ran diagonally across the country, threading through hundreds of small towns rather than racing around them. For farmers in Illinois and Missouri, it meant a direct path to get grain to market. For small business owners, it meant a stream of travelers stopping for gas, food, and lodging.

From the beginning, Route 66 was a lifeline for places that the railroads had passed by - and a promise that the automobile age would bring prosperity to Main Street America.

Illinois was the first state to fully pave its section of Route 66, completing the work by 1926. That 300-mile stretch from Chicago to the Mississippi River became a model for the rest of the route - and the southwestern corner of our state, including Granite City, became the final leg of the Illinois journey.

The highway's most enduring nickname came from tragedy.

In the 1930s, severe drought struck the Great Plains. Poor farming practices had stripped the topsoil of its native grasses, and when the rains stopped, the wind carried the earth away in massive black clouds that blotted out the sun. They called it the Dust Bowl.

An estimated 210,000 people fled the devastation, packing their belongings into overloaded cars and trucks and heading west on Route 66. They were looking for work, for hope, for a chance to start over in California's promised land. Most found only more hardship - poverty wages, tent cities, and hostility from locals who didn't want them.

John Steinbeck captured their suffering in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, which followed the fictional Joad family from Oklahoma to California along the highway. Steinbeck called Route 66 "the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership." He gave it a name that stuck: the Mother Road.

The phrase endured because it captured something true. Route 66 wasn't just asphalt and gravel. It was hope made tangible - a physical path toward something better, even when that hope proved illusory.

For Granite City, with its own waves of immigrants seeking opportunity in the steel mills, the resonance runs deep.

Granite City hasn't forgotten its Route 66 heritage. In August 2024, the city unveiled It's Electric Neon Sign Park at 19th Street and Delmar Avenue - a $500,000 project funded by the Great Rivers & Routes Tourism Bureau and the Illinois Office of Tourism.

The park features three restored neon signs from Granite City's past: the Washington Theatre, Hudson Jewelry, and Reese Drugs. These weren't roadside attractions in the traditional sense - they were the signs that lit up our downtown when travelers rolled through on their way to the Chain of Rocks Bridge. Seeing them glow again, from dusk until dawn, feels like reclaiming a piece of our history.

The park also includes murals, a model of the Chain of Rocks Bridge (complete with love locks), and representations of products once made in Granite City - including a giant Graniteware teapot. It's quirky and nostalgic, exactly the kind of roadside attraction that made Route 66 famous.

Since then, more Route 66 attractions have arrived. "Earl" the Mechanic Muffler Man now stands 14 feet tall outside O'Brien Tire & Auto Care - a business that has served Granite City since 1906, predating Route 66 itself by two decades. And "Rusty," a 20-foot Muffler Man with a sledgehammer, guards the entrance to Lincoln Place, honoring the immigrants and industrial workers who built this city.

These aren't relics of a vanished past. They're new landmarks for a new generation of travelers - and signals that Granite City is ready to welcome the world.

When Route 66 enthusiasts talk about the "Last 100 Miles," they're talking about us.

From Virden (just outside Springfield) to the Chain of Rocks Bridge, this final stretch of Route 66 in Illinois passes through communities like Staunton, Edwardsville, Collinsville, and Granite City. The Great Rivers & Routes Tourism Bureau has been working for years to develop attractions, secure grants, and put this region on the Route 66 map.

And the map is bigger than you might think. Route 66 draws visitors from around the world - particularly from Europe, where the American road trip is a romantic ideal many people dream of experiencing. It's not unusual to meet German or British tourists at the Chain of Rocks Bridge, halfway through a cross-country journey they've planned for years.

The centennial will only intensify this attention. Statewide celebrations will include a kickoff event at the Old Joliet Prison on April 30, a Route 66 Centennial Caravan passing through Illinois communities on June 23-24, and a major celebration at the Route 66 Motorheads Bar, Grill & Museum in Springfield on November 11.

Locally, Edwardsville is planning a centennial celebration at City Park on June 13, and the Great Rivers & Routes Tourism Bureau has events planned throughout the year. The Old Chain of Rocks Bridge will be a focal point - one of the few original Route 66 bridges still accessible to the public.

A hundred years ago, Route 66 was just a number assigned to a patchwork of existing roads. Today, it's one of the most recognized symbols of American culture in the world.

What happened in between is a story about what roads mean to us - not just as infrastructure, but as promises. The promise that you can get in your car and go somewhere else. The promise that opportunity exists over the next hill. The promise that America is big enough to hold all our hopes and restless enough to keep us moving.

Granite City has always been a place people came to, not passed through. Our ancestors came for the steel mills, for jobs, for a chance to build something. We're a destination, not a waypoint.

But Route 66 reminds us that we're also connected to something larger. The same highway that carried Dust Bowl refugees to an uncertain future carried postwar families to vacation adventures. The same neon signs that welcomed weary travelers in the 1950s now glow again in a downtown park.

The Mother Road turns 100 this year. And for those of us who live along its final miles, that's worth celebrating - not because Route 66 made Granite City what it is, but because it connected us to everyone else who was looking for something better.

That's what roads are for.

The Route 66 Centennial runs throughout 2026. For information about local events and attractions, visit riversandroutes.com or illinoisroute66.org.

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