A section of old Route 66 on the southeast edge of Springfield, Ill., has been recommended by a state advisory panel to the National Register of Historic Places, reports the Springfield Journal-Register.
According to the article, it’s a 1.3-mile section of road between East Lake Shore Drive and New City Road, south of the lake. A good map can be found here. According to the story, the road dates to the 1920s, and was used as an alignment of Route 66 in 1933-35.
Illinois Route 66 preservationist John Weiss wrote the application. The county plans to add shoulders to the road in 2009 or 2010. Weiss says he doesn’t object to this, but doesn’t want the road surface itself paved over. The National Register designation doesn’t prevent such changes, but it at least would give road engineers something to think about.
Weiss said once the state recommends a property to the National Register, it’s a “done deal.”
(In case the initial link to the story looks funky, it’s because it’s in a Google cache. The story initially ran on the Journal-Register’s site on Friday, but quickly disappeared. Route 66 enthusiast Peter Stork tracked it down in the cache, for which we’re grateful. A later version of the story is here.)
The most fun thing about this old stretch is the dichotomy of how it begins on its north end. You come off of Lake Shore Drive amidst the woods, still very much in the Springfield area, and BOOM – all of a sudden it’s the flat open fields of Central Illinois and a straight road due south. Very jarring, and very cool.