Route 66, the Mother Road, became an American icon of open-road romance and freedom after its creation in 1926 as one of the first numbered U.S. highways, running 2,500 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles. It carried Dust Bowl migrants in the 1930s, drew families bound for the Southwest and California in the 1950s and 1960s, and fostered roadside attractions, service stations, diners, and cafes along its path. In Illinois, the route began in downtown Chicago, crossed suburbs and prairie farmland, passed through Midwestern towns, and ended at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River, which carried traffic from 1936 to 1955 and is now open to walkers and bicyclists. Decommissioned in 1985 after losing out to faster freeways, Route 66 endures through nostalgia, popular culture, and surviving places along the Illinois Historic Route 66 National Scenic Byway. Edwardsville long offered travelers food, service, and local history, with the highway passing from 1926 until the mid-1950s by Cathcart's Cafe and Cathcart-Goddard Tourist Home, Hi-Way Tavern and Cafe, City Park, Kriege Hardware, El Del Uptown Tavern, and the Bohm Building. The Madison County Centennial Monument in front of the Carnegie Public Library, sculpted by Charles Mulligan in 1912, is a sixteen-foot marble work with four female figures representing Learning, Justice, Plenty, and Virtue. Cathcart's Cafe operated twenty-four hours a day with food, groceries, and tourist information, while the neighboring Cathcart-Goddard Tourist Home, run from 1922 through 1954 by the George Cathcart family and later the Fred Goddard family, included three uninsulated tourist cottages and a bathroom on the back porch of the home. City Park has hosted free band concerts and festivals for more than a century. Other attractions in the Edwardsville region include Halley's Cash Market, the Wildey Theatre, the West End Service Station, the Coles Monument honoring Governor Edward Coles, the Luna Cafe, the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, the Brooks Catsup Water Tower, and Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.
