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Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Illinois’ Route 66 Trail

The League of Illinois Bicyclists, in conjunction with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and other partners, have published the map of Illinois’ Route 66 Trail.

Right now, the cue sheets that go along with the map are north to south, from Chicago to St. Louis, but LIB says south-to-north cue sheets should be available soon.

Much of the trail actually is not on the Mother Road, primarily for safety purposes.

For example, much of the Madison County segment of the trail uses Madison County Transit's Confluence and Quercus Grove trails as well as the bike lanes on Poag Road between Edwardsville and the Lewis and Clark Historic site.

One of the old alignments of Route 66 used Chain of Rocks Road from the Mississippi River to the present Illinois Route 157, took Route 157 through Edwardsville and Hamel, then continued north. While for historical accuracy's sake, it would be better that the trail used that alignment, those roads simply aren't very well suited for bicycle touring because of high traffic or inadequate lane width.

As you might imagine, the trail also strays off the alignments of Route 66 in the Chicago area, again because of heavy traffic on the streets that were part of Route 66. Through the rest of the state. the trail often does stray from the Route 66 alignments, but the map gives advanced cyclists the option of using the actual alignments.

The trail, by LIB's own admission, is a work in progress. As more off-road routes and road improvements are made, the trail will change. But at least this is a start, and we should appreciate the efforts of LIB and DNR in putting this ambitious project together.

To get a feel why the Mother Road is so important to many people, check out these sites:
Illinois Route 66 Heritage Project
Route 66 Association of Illinois
Route 66 News
Spring Break 66

Roger 1 comments 2:59 AM

Comments:

Outstanding! I want to ride my bike on this route, eat burgers at old diners and stay in tourist courts or old campgrounds. The only problem... running out of route maps in St. Louis if I want to keep heading west. I wonder how much of a step back in time a tour like this would be?
It sounds like you're familiar with parts of the route?

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Anonymous : 1:43 PM