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. In Illinois, it began in downtown Chicago, passed through suburbs and rural countryside, and continued to the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which carried traffic across the Mississippi River from 1936 to 1955. The road served people fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and families seeking adventure in the Southwest and California in the 1950s and 1960s, while diners, cafes, service stations, and roadside attractions shaped the journey. In the Romeoville region, nearby historic sites include White Fence Farm Restaurant, Isle a la Cache Museum, the Fitzpatrick House, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and its museum, the Gaylord Building, the Norton Building, and Plainfield, where Route 66 crosses the Lincoln Highway. In Romeoville, today’s Route 53 followed an older transportation corridor that began as an Indian trail, became a carriage road, and was later paved into a two-lane highway before being designated Route 66. The Fitzpatrick family farmed more than 700 acres there in the 1840s, and Patrick Fitzpatrick built a Greek Revival limestone homestead from local stone. The family later donated land to the Archdiocese of Chicago, which founded what is now Lewis University in 1932. Although U.S. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985 after losing out to faster freeways, nostalgia and popular culture have kept the Mother Road alive.
