We were amused to learn in recent days that the iconic Route 66 does not now begin or (depending on your direction of travel) end where we thought it did at Jackson Boulevard/Adams Street and Michigan Avenue but well over a mile north and east on Navy Pier.
As far as we can tell, the reason for the cheeky change to the terminus/beginning of the Mother Road was that Navy Pier and its benefactors at the city of Chicago just decided it would be thus, so as to snag more business during this 100th anniversary year for Route 66. All it really took was a sign and mayoral declaration.
That new sign was duly planted March 25, shrewdly timed to coincide with the annual Toast to Harry Caray at Harry Caray’s Tavern on the Pier. No matter that Route 66 was a federal highway; the chance for a little ex-post-facto rerouting likely appealed to Mayor Brandon Johnson as another way to give the feds a little poke in the eye. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985 so it’s purely a symbolic routing with many claims on its management. And if Chicago wants to change its routing within its city limits, who could claim it is not free to do so?
Also, our California friends did something similar in 2009 when they determined the western edge of Route 66 would be the Santa Monica Pier, rather than the historical terminus at Lincoln and Olympic boulevards, where U.S. 66 joined U.S. 101A. By sticking an end-of-the-road sign next to Pacific Park at Santa Monica Pier, the local tourism office boosted the pier’s profile; that’s especially true in an era when iconic, photo op signs (such as “Welcome to Las Vegas” or “Welcome to the Smoky Mountains National Park”) attract hoards of those who want to document their presence for the internet.
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The Los Angeles addition was pretty much a straight line a few hundred yards to the water; Chicago’s version looks more akin to gerrymandering, which we are on record as opposing.
We’ll make an exception for Route 66. Nobody wants pedestrians doing selfies in the middle of DuSable Lake Shore Drive, cars whizzing by. And fresh water to salt water has a certain poetry.
Moreover, Route 66 has always been subject to change as anyone who has tried to drive or bike a section of the Mother Road is well aware; the traveler often has to choose between the original 1926 routing and one of its subsequent realignments. At times now, it disappears altogether under fresher asphalt, subsumed by the interstates that were its murderers. Still, no interstate stirs up the imagination as much as America’s first American highway to be completely paved. And no road has comparable symbolic freight as a road to guitar-strumming freedom and also, thanks to John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” as a highway of the desperate.
These days, of course, people from all over the world want to see its historic motels, quirky tourist attractions and its 2,448-mile string of retro gas pumps and gorgeous neon signs.
Illinois is not our favorite stretch of the Mother Road; Arizona and New Mexico have the Land of Lincoln beat when it comes to scenery and Americana, but true fans want to at least start or finish at one end. And Route 66 has plenty to recommend it for an Easter drive through Central and Southern Illinois, including the Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum in Pontiac and the Cozy Dog drive-in in Springfield.
Road trip anyone? Pier to pier?
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