The Mother Road Through the Capital City

Route Sixty Six was officially designated on November eleventh, nineteen twenty-six. The road ran two thousand four hundred and forty-eight miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, and for three hundred and one miles of that distance it crossed Illinois. Springfield sits near the center of the Illinois stretch.

The highway came through the heart of town, passing by the State Capitol, running along what is now Sixth Street and other corridors that still carry traces of the roadside culture that grew up around it. Gas stations, diners, tourist courts. The road became something larger than a highway during the nineteen-thirties, when drought and economic collapse drove hundreds of thousands of Dust Bowl migrants west along its route.

John Steinbeck called it the Mother Road in 'The Grapes of Wrath.' The name stuck. By the time it was fully paved in nineteen thirty-eight, Route Sixty Six was the first United States highway to be paved end to end.

Springfield contributed at least one piece of roadside history to the Route Sixty Six story. In nineteen forty-six, a veteran named Ed Waldmire began selling corn dogs coated in cornmeal batter at the Illinois State Fair. His wife Virginia gave the product the name Cozy Dog, thinking it sounded more appealing than the name Ed had been using.

The Cozy Dog Drive-In opened on South Sixth Street that same year, on the Route Sixty Six alignment, and it has been serving the original product there ever since. Ed's son Bob became one of the most celebrated Route Sixty Six artists in the country. The highway was decommissioned in nineteen eighty-five.

The signs came down. The diners are still open.