Officials for the City of Chicago on Wednesday marked Navy Pier as the unofficial eastern start point of Route 66 during its centennial, including a new sign at the pier.
The sign is outside Harry Caray’s Tavern at the pier, the design which was chosen by the Route 66 Commission and the city, reported the Chicago Sun-Times. Caray, a St. Louis native, was a longtime broadcaster for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs.
Antique cars surrounded the sign as local leaders and Route 66 boosters celebrated the occasion, including Bill Thomas of the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership and an Abraham Lincoln impersonator.
Other people who spoke at the ceremony were former \Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johson, longtime Cubs public address announcer Wayne Messmer and the rock band Plain White T’s.
Here’s a brief report from NBC Chicago:
Here’s another report from the ceremony by WLS-TV in Chicago.
The actual eastern terminus for westbound travelers is at Adams Street and Michigan Avenue, about 1 1/2 miles southwest of the pier.
But the marketing potential of a pier-to-pier journey on Route 66 was too good to pass up. And there’s precedence for this.
In 2009, the symbolic western endpoint of Route 66 was moved one mile from the actual terminus at Olympic and Lincoln boulevards — a once-nondescript intersection — to the gaudier Santa Monica Pier. Even before that time, many Route 66 travelers ended their journeys at that pier that juts into the Pacific Ocean. The move culminated with the erection of the “Route 66: End of the Trail” sign.
Both Navy Pier (built in 1916) and Santa Monica Pier (built in 1909) also boast their own historic cachets.
(Screen-capture image from NBC Chicago video of the new Route 66 sign at Navy Pier in Chicago)