Route 66, the Mother Road, became an American icon of romance, freedom, migration, and travel after its creation in 1926 as one of the first numbered U.S. highways, running 2,500 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles through Illinois and onward to Missouri at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River. It carried Dust Bowl migrants in the 1930s and families seeking adventure in the Southwest and California in the 1950s and '60s, while roadside attractions, diners, cafes, and service stations shaped the experience of travelers along the way. Though U.S. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985 as freeways replaced it, nostalgia has kept it alive, and the Dwight region preserves that legacy through surviving service stations, motels, a bypass borrow pit at Lions Lake, a 1937 tunnel for schoolchildren, a restored advertising barn, and other historic sites. Dwight itself, founded in 1854 as a station on the Chicago and Alton railroad and planned around its depot rather than a town square, remained a memorable stop on the road, with historic downtown architecture, the Keeley Institute founded in 1879, the Oughton Estate windmill built in 1896, and the Pioneer Gothic Church of 1857, where the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward IV, worshipped during a visit in 1860.