Route 66, known as the Mother Road, became an American icon of open-road freedom after its creation in 1926 as one of the first numbered U.S. highways, running 2,500 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles. In Illinois it begins in downtown Chicago, passes through suburbs, prairie farmland, and Midwestern towns, and ends 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. The road served people fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and families seeking the Southwest and California in the 1950s and 1960s, while diners, service stations, motels, and roadside attractions supported travelers and sustained towns whose businesses had shifted from the railroad to the highway. In Logan County, Route 66 paralleled the Chicago and Alton Railroad, linking rural farms and towns to the markets of Chicago and St. Louis and becoming the lifeblood of communities such as Lincoln, Atlanta, and Elkhart. The region also preserves strong ties to Abraham Lincoln, who practiced law in Logan County from 1840 to 1847 on the Eighth Judicial Circuit; the city of Lincoln was named for him before he became president, and on August 27, 1853, he helped christen the new town with the juice of a watermelon. Although U.S. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, its nostalgia and surviving alignments, bridges, stations, eateries, and attractions keep it alive.