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 and serving over time as a path for Dust Bowl migrants, vacationing families bound for the Southwest and California, and travelers drawn to diners, service stations, roadside attractions, and small Midwestern towns. In Illinois, the route begins in downtown Chicago, passes through suburbs and prairie farmland, and reaches its scenic endpoint at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which carried traffic over the Mississippi River from 1936 to 1955 and is now open for walking and biking. Unable to compete with freeways, U.S. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, but nostalgia has kept it alive. Joliet stands at a major transportation crossroads where Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway meet and where railroads, highways, and canals converge along the Des Plaines River. The city drew people of many cultures to work in quarries, iron works, and roadways, earning the nicknames City of Steel after the 1869 steel mill and City of Stone from its limestone quarries. Available stone helped lead to construction of Joliet Prison in 1858, and after the 1871 Chicago Fire, demand for Joliet stone grew so much that by 1890 the city was shipping three thousand railroad cars each month. In the Route 66 era, Joliet developed and preserved attractions including the Old Joliet Prison, Joliet Iron Works, the site of the first Dairy Queen in the country, the Rialto Square Theatre, and Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, and it also entered popular culture through the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, which begins with the release of "Joliet" Jake from Joliet Prison.
