Tag: Illinois
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Driving the nine-foot concrete Illinois highway
On my Illinois National Road trip this year, I found a nine-foot-wide section of the old road near Martinsville. I estimated that it had been built between 1909 and 1916. My research found that Illinois built other one-lane concrete highways, but I had no idea where. Another roadfan, a fellow named Rich Dinkela, found one:…
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The end of the National Road
The plan was to build the National Road all the way to the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Unfortunately, money ran out about 70 miles to the east at Vandalia, Illinois, and that was that. I don’t know where construction stopped in Vandalia, but for me the National Road experience ends at the old Illinois…
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A confluence of National Road and US 40 alignments near Vandalia, Illinois
The bonanza of abandoned old pavement along the Illinois National Road dries up just before Montrose, a little town just east of Effingham. Thence west, US 40 almost entirely follows the same alignment of the road from when Illinois paved it in concrete in the 1920s. From a postcard, here’s what that concrete looked like…
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Drunken road striping
West of Effingham, Illinois, US 40 makes a wide curve and passes over a railroad track. An earlier alignment of the road was left behind when the overpass was built. Here’s what all of this looks like from the air. Humorously, on the ground this alignment looks like this. I can hear the chatter at…
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Are there two alignments of the National Road in Effingham, Illinois?
We drove right on through Effingham on our May trek across Illinois on the National Road. We had lingered in Clark and Cumberland Counties, and I really wanted to get to the end of the National Road in Vandalia before we ran out of daylight. But I did explore the National Road through Effingham in 2007,…
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The Village of the Porches: Greenup, Illinois, on the National Road
We drove our car on asphalt pavement into Greenup, Illinois. But it would have seemed somehow more fitting if we had ridden in on horseback on a dusty dirt road, so much did the town remind us of the wild, wild west. We expected to see Jesse James, having just robbed the bank, jump off a balcony onto a…
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The beautiful homes on Main Street in Casey, Illinois
If you ever visit Casey, Illinois, be sure to do two things: (1) pronounce it “cay-zee,” and (2) drive in from the east on Main Street. The first is to prevent embarrassing yourself should you talk to any of the locals, for the town’s name is not pronounced as it looks. The second is to enjoy…
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The ten-foot-wide highway
As you follow the old National Road westward across Illinois, shortly before you reach Martinsville the abandoned brick highway abruptly turns into an abandoned concrete highway. Here’s an eastbound shot of it from 2007, when I first visited it. This road’s construction is unusual in that it is three parallel strips of concrete. I couldn’t figure out then why it was…
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The last stone-arch bridge still in use on the Illinois National Road
The historic marker says that this bridge was completed between 1834 and 1837, making it both the oldest surviving bridge, and the only stone bridge, still in use on the National Road in Illinois. You’ll find it on the National Road just west of Marshall. US 40 bypasses Marshall but rejoins the National Road’s path just…
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Captured: The Archer House
We can drive 60 miles per hour on US 40 today. But when the National Road was new in the late 1830s, the fastest traffic might cover 60 miles in a day, and only if you traveled by stagecoach. Conestoga wagons could count on covering only about 15 miles in a day. So inns appeared every 10 to 15 miles along major…
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A famous row of buildings on US 40 in Marshall, Illinois
In 1950 and 1951, George Stewart drove US 40 across the United States and photographed scenes all along the way. He wrote a book in which he shared his photographs from the journey: US 40: Cross Section of the United States of America. One of his photos is of this row of buildings in Marshall, Illinois, on…
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The abandoned brick National Road in Illinois
Illinois has something that no other National Road state can touch: abandoned historic pavement segments visible from the modern highway for about 50 miles. In the 1950s, the Illinois Department of Highways built a new US 40 alongside the old, and left the old road to rot. West from the Indiana state line, the road is paved in…