In 1924, two years before U.S. Route 66 opened, the only way out of Atlanta, Illinois, was either by horse or by train.
“[Route 66] did what it was designed to do, which is to connect smaller rural towns to larger markets. But interestingly, it had that positive effect, but it also had a negative effect," said Bill Thomas, curator of the American Giants Museum in the Logan County city. "You can read letters… from Atlanta businessmen who were complaining that people were using this new, hard road to get in their cars and take their business and do their shopping elsewhere.”
Atlanta is a one-of-a-kind pit stop for anyone obsessed with giant fiberglass statues. It’s one of several projects attracting tourism in the city along historic Route 66, according to Thomas.
Quickly after the road was first built, the momentum for quick travel got out of hand. In 1947, Route 66 first drove around Atlanta, as opposed to driving through the main street, bypassing traffic from the north to south end of town along the east side.
“But then the interstate multiplied that connection or that impact tremendously, because it was built even farther to the east of town, and if you were a community that didn’t have an interstate interchange, you were really hurt,” Thomas said.
Thomas remembers when Atlanta suffered a fate well-known to small towns along the route. When he served on a planning commission in the early 1990s, much of downtown Atlanta was boarded up. It was at risk of drying up and blowing away, he said.
“This community, a bit facetiously at first, decided, OK, well, let’s create a tourism industry. And really nobody knew how to do it or what to do, but we worked at it and did it,” he said.
That was in 2008. And in 2009, a few tourist attractions had been developed and people started to come to town.
“Since then, over the five primary tourism months here in Atlanta, sales tax revenue has gone up by 43% and it’s primarily due to the tourists that stop here,” he said. “The last two full seasons, the number of people who have signed the guest book in the American Giants Museum has averaged just over 8,000 each year.”
Atlanta’s population is about 1,600 people.
Safe to say, tapping into the nostalgia of Route 66 was a lifeline for Atlanta. It’s a story that has mirrored many other communities along the road, which saw the changing of highway travel affect them over time.
“We were fortunate in Atlanta to have an interstate interchange, but many cars still, it was so easy just to speed on by to get from point A to point B…”
The real dip in local economies came in the mid-1980s and '90s, when Thomas served on the planning commission. But the American Giants Museum now stands as one of those efforts to help save the town.
As the city's former tourism director told WGLT in 2024, the museum and other nearby attractions entice travelers to stop and spend their money in the town instead of just snapping a quick picture with Paul Bunyan holding a hot dog and leaving.
So, as the centennial celebration of U.S. Route 66, the year 2026 has a lot to live up to building upon years of preparation. Domestic and foreign visitors alike will flock to hundreds of communities along the Mother Road; they've been expecting them.
Businesses along Route 66 are grappling with not just making the summer a moment in their history but a movement to take advantage of the nostalgia-filled love of the road.
Kicks Bar and Grill
At the edge of the village of Towanda is Kicks Bar and Grill. Serving typical American fare, and in a beer garden if customers wish, it’s a place to eat for all kinds of folks.
Although, with a population of about 350 people in town, it’s the only option. But that doesn’t stop Jack Buss and Todd Bliss from being loyal regulars. The Towanda locals have been friends for 30 years and have been coming to Kicks since it opened in 2004.
“Well, since before it was Kicks, [when] it was the mini mart,” said Bliss.
“I built a house over here,” said Buss. “We used to come over and eat lunch here before I had a kitchen.”
Buss remembered it as a small gas station, with a hardly anything on the shelves and a greasy kitchen at the back. Now, it’s a place to grab lunch with a friend or avoid cooking dinner.
“We’re at home, I look at my wife, I go, ‘What do you think about for dinner?’ [and] she looks at me and goes, ‘I don’t know, what are you thinking about for dinner?’” said Buss. “Well it looks like we’re going to Kicks tonight, huh?”
Back in 2004, the pair did not notice when co-owners Glenn Corkill and Scott Tuggle bought, gutted and expanded the building.
People enjoy the atmosphere at Kicks, they said. That’s why they come from the other small towns nestled in rural McLean County to spend time there.
Corkill and Tuggle take pride in working in the hospitality business, as they have done their whole adult lives. Tuggle said the people are what the business is about.
“We’re here to cater to people. Towanda didn’t have anything at the time, as far as a restaurant and/or bar. To this day, it’s still the only one, and we thrive on that…” Tuggle said.
Still, Tuggle remembers some thought he and business partner Corkill were crazy for buying the place and sinking money into a restaurant in a little village off Interstate 55.
“’And why would you go out in the country and open up a bar? Well because I thought, or we thought that it would have potential, and it did,” Tuggle said.
“When we came in here, we had to take the [gas] tanks out, do the EPA thing and have the ground tested for what, like five years?” Corkill said.
But now, all the work has made it what it is today, and what it is is a gathering place for the community.
“Well, the food is awesome, and you can sit outside if you want, plenty of parking. …They come from all over, because it’s just a fun place to come to,” Bliss said. “I just think that this place was great for Towanda, Illinois, and the surrounding areas, because people really enjoy it.”
For Kicks, the opportunity to incorporate Route 66 into its marketing has been a successful business plan, though it was not the original idea.
“I didn’t know much about [Route] 66 back when we first opened it but I’ve learned a lot,” Tuggle said. “I really had no idea it was that big a deal, but we get people from, I mean, all over the world.”
Visitors from Japan, Germany, Russia, Yugoslavia and more have visited to get their own Kicks on 66, a common experience for businesses along the route. They expect to see many more during the summer months.
“It’s been great meeting people from other countries. It’s been a real treat," Tuggle said.
The Lexington House on 66 Airbnb
Rex Osborn and Linda Abeldt cannot even stay at times in the house they own in Lexington; their Lexington House on 66 Airbnb can be booked out for months.
To be fair, customers renting the house was indeed the goal of the couple’s Route 66-themed house.
They hail from Modesto, California.
“That was my idea, because once I saw the location and where that was right on the Old Route 66 we knew we had to do something with the theme,” said Abeldt.
“We talked about it a little bit and decided that that would be the perfect Airbnb, and we also knew that there was not a lot of places to stay if you wanted to come to Lexington or go through Lexington on Route 66.”
The house was built in 1936 and is decorated like a home from the 1960s, a mix of groovy and diner-style décor. It sleeps eight people and rents for around $250 a night.
Critics might say the same to Osborn and Abeldt as they did to Kicks: Why open a business in a small, rural town? Lexington’s population sits around 2,000 people.
“Lexington, as you know, probably was considered a bedroom community to Bloomington-Normal, but it never lost its hometown feel. So, when you go into Lexington, you get downtown, every business is busy. They’re full,” said Osborn. “When you go to some smaller towns in Illinois, there are a lot of main streets that are empty. Not this town.”
With other properties they rent out, the couple felt confident in accomplishing another one. Plus, the house was just sitting when they don’t use it on their visits back to the area.
But any naysayers of this project would also have been proved wrong. According to the couple, business is booming.
“We have everything from a one-night stay as people are driving and they’re going to get up the next morning and finish the route, to we’ve got customers that come every summer and stay for two or three months,” Abeldt said. “We have other Airbnbs and this one, by far, is the busiest of all of them.”
The Lexington House on 66 is another example of a strong drive for businesses along the route. The couple said they probably don’t have much time for another Airbnb, but they would absolutely consider it — because they see the growth in a place like Lexington and on Route 66.
“I can tell you a lot of cities are jealous [of] what is being accomplished in Illinois, specifically in Lexington…” Osborn said.
Sprague’s Service Station
It’s been 10 years since Terri Ryburn and the Town of Normal bought the historic Sprague’s Service Station in her mission to restore the building to its former glory.
As a scholar of Route 66 herself, Ryburn is just as excited as anyone else to celebrate the centennial this year.
In one sense, the building is just that: a cream-colored building with a rust-colored roof and former gas station.
At the same time, though, the building stands for something more, Ryburn said. Places like Sprague’s have the potential to carry the love of Route 66 into the future by keeping authentic, real artifacts around for visitors.
“I’m always telling people that a road is just a road. It’s really the people that you meet along the road, and you meet a lot of people passionate about maintaining or restoring,” she said. “Now, this image goes all over the world. ...This last week I had [people from] Romania, Serbia, I’ve had French Polynesia. I just get the gamut from all over the world.”
Restoration projects along Route 66 are happening at more places than just Sprague’s. Ryburn said that speaks to a love for nostalgia.
“I think a lot of people…they remember taking a trip as a kid, or it may not even have been on Route 66, it may have been somewhere else and they like that feeling of freedom and the open road,” she said. “And I know when you talk to Europeans about why they come here, a lot of it is that idea that you’re traveling through America.”
In her experience, Ryburn said some out of the country visitors have been to Chicago or Disney World, but it isn’t until they drive through the corn and soybean fields of Illinois that they know America.
“They see the good and the bad; they see the rich and the poor; and it really is a representation of America that they take back with them. And often times recommend to friends and relatives that they come and do the same journey,” Ryburn said.
While this popularity for a classic American road trip is not new for domestic and foreign tourists alike, Ryburn believes these good feelings have the potential to carry Route 66 into the future.
“We debate this all the time. Who’s going to care about this when the old folks die? Are the kids going to enjoy it, younger people?” she said. “But what I’m seeing a lot of the kids who watched the Cars movie 20 years ago are now old enough to drive, and some of them are old enough to have children, toddlers of their own.”
The 2006 Pixar movie Cars tells the story of a racecar being stranded in a forgotten town along Route 66. The racecar breathes new life into the community.
The plot of that movie, however, is not as fictional as the story. Many towns along Route 66 lost business and lost population once the implementation of the interstate system. That’s a fact.
Ryburn said the movement to regain an appreciation for the old and forgotten is reinvigorating for the Lexingtons, Towandas and other towns like them.
McLean County’s Cruisin’ Through the Century party weekend takes place June 6 and 7 as far north as Chenoa and as south as McLean – all along the historic U.S. Route 66.
