Route 66, the Mother Road, became an American icon after its creation in 1926 as one of the first numbered U.S. highways, running 2,500 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles. It served many roles over time, including as a road of flight for people escaping the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and as a route of adventure for families headed to the Southwest and California in the 1950s and 1960s. In Illinois, the route began in downtown Chicago, passed through suburbs and rural prairie farmland, and ended at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which carried traffic across the Mississippi River from 1936 to 1955 and is now open for walking and biking. Along the way, roadside attractions, service stations, diners, and cafes catered to travelers, and many historic examples still survive. Although U.S. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985 because it could not compete with faster freeways, nostalgia sustained its legacy. In the Pontiac region, surviving places linked to the road include a 1926 restaurant, original 1926 bridge abutments, the old State Patrol Headquarters Building from 1935 to 1942, a tunnel built so Ladd School students could cross safely, a museum of Route 66 artifacts, a former state police headquarters used from 1941 to 2003, historic Chenoa, an original one-mile 1926 stretch of the road, Lexington landmarks, and a 1.6-mile stretch of abandoned 1954 pavement in Towanda. Pontiac itself experienced four shifts in the road's alignment away from the heart of the city as roadside businesses clogged highway flow, and each time the town expanded to reconnect with it; even after I-55 replaced Route 66, Pontiac continued to celebrate the road's spirit.