The City of Springfield, Illinois, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week to celebrate the opening of a quarter-mile stretch of original Route 66 in Carpenter Park to the public.
The 16-foot-wide roadway, which had served as Route 66 from 1926 to 1936, sat unused and mostly neglected for 90 years.
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At a Wednesday morning ribbon cutting around 60 people gathered to hear from speakers such as Mayor Misty Buscher, State Senator Doris Turner and Springfield Tourism Director, Scott Dahl.
Dahl told WTAX News the tree-lined, quarter-mile length has been cleared and cleaned and now features a grand entryway, information pallets and recreations of popular billboards and burma-shave style signage that travelers might have seen in the 1930s.
A bunch of photos from the event were posted on Facebook:
More can be found at the Route 66 Carpenter Park Alignment page on Facebook.
(Image of the Route 66 alignment of Carpenter Park via City of Springfield)