This year’s Fall Road Trip (2025) was traveling the entire length of one of Illinois’ longest state highways: Route 1.

Illinois Route 1 traces a path far older than the pavement beneath it, largely following a historic trail linking southern Lake Michigan to Fort Sackville in Vincennes, Indiana. The corridor was strategically important before and during the Revolutionary War, giving the British access from Canada into the interior via the Wabash, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers after their 1763 victory over France. As Indiana developed earlier than Illinois, this route became one of Illinois’ earliest heavily traveled corridors. When the state highway system formed in the late 1910s, the historic connection fittingly became Route 1, now stretching 323 miles as the state’s longest original highway.

The trip took 5 days. In this entry, I highlight Days 3 and 4 in this Part III of III trip log. I started my Day 3 in Danville and ended it in Equality before staying the night in Harrisburg – the stretch from Danville to just north of Lawrenceville was covered in Part II. Day 4 saw the completion of the Route 1 adventure from Equality to Cave-in-Rock, and also had side adventures to places such as Rosiclare, formerly home to Illinois’ fluorite production, and Old Shawneetown. Both side trips will be written about in the future.

Click here for a trip preview
Part 1: Log – Album (covering Chicago to Danville)
 Part 2: Log – Album (covering Danville to Lawrenceville)
You are here —> —> Part 3: Log – Album (covering Lawrenceville to Cave-in-Rock)

***There are way more photos I took along this stretch than the ones you saw when you clicked the links on this page. Click HERE for the full Part III photo album and see more things that I didn’t describe in this trip log!

Lawrenceville

The first thing I knew about Lawrenceville was its high school boys basketball program, and how it was a dominant small school force in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s continued on-and-off since, with this year’s 2025-26 team having been ranked No. 1 in Class 1A throughout most of this season. Today’s team plays in a new building than those four-time state title teams did back in the day.

Unfortunately the former gym is a charred memory. The former Lawrenceville High campus burned in 2017, and a partial skeleton remains of the campus – constructed in two parts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The grass is all overgrown, and its old football field looks like a prairie with goalposts and a scoreboard coming from the ground. It’s surely to be demolished one day, but I’m glad I got at least a small glimpse of what it sort of looked like.

St. Francisville and Cannonball Bridge

About 15 miles south of Lawrenceville is another -ville town, St. Francisville, along the Wabash River (a couple of miles east of Route 1). Now we are getting into settlements that saw activity from the White man in the late 18th century. Illinois was first settled from the south up, and towns such as St. Francisville and Golconda (which I will mention in another post about a side trip I made from this one) were where early American settlers ventured west to live away from the original 13 colonies.

St. Francisville was where Col. George Rogers Clark crossed the Wabash River in 1779 to provide reinforcements from Kaskaskia to Vincennes in a successful defeat of the British during the Revolutionary War. The town itself was established in the 1810s and grew to have a high school at one time.

Crossing the Wabash once was done in two ways: via ferry until 2012, and by train until the 1960s. The train bridge – now called the Wabash Cannonball Bridge – remained for years after the tracks were removed, and in the early 1970s, a local farmer bought the old bridge and turned it into a one-lane toll bridge for vehicles on wheels, having laid out wood planks to provide a smooth ride. The State of Illinois bought it in 2009.

The bridge continues to operate as a toll one, and driving on its wood planks is an experience like no other. There is a 10 mile-per-hour speed limit, and only enough width to fit a large pickup truck. The ploppity-plop of the planks, and the jingle of the screws are heard throughout the ride, and if you’re scared of bridges, this is probably one you don’t want to be on.

After crossing the bridge the first time, I did a U-turn and crossed again while shooting video. I posted that video on Facebook not long after, and it became one of my most popular posts of all-time. I alluded to some of the strange peculiars of the bridge (mentioning that it seemed a little scary at times), and those remarks weren’t well-received by those who cross it on a daily basis (I was called a synonym for a cat in some comments). Nevertheless, this was an exciting experience that makes this road trip an awesome one.

Riverview Stadium, Mt. Carmel

Route 1 also goes through Mt. Carmel. It’s not to be confused with the Catholic high school in Chicago, one that has won more than a dozen state football championships. The “downstate” Mt. Carmel has one state championship to its history, but a much neater football stadium.

Riverview Stadium is home to the Mount Carmel Aces. It is unique in that the field is down from a bluff overlooking it. Home seating is a narrow concrete section along the bluff about the size of both sidelines, with one set of stairs in the middle. As its name suggests, the crowd looks across toward the Wabash River, if they aren’t looking down on the field. There are steel bleachers for visitor seating, but the concrete home stands are what makes this stadium truly unique among those in Illinois. I’d like to see a home game there some time.

Mt. Carmel also was once home to the Grand Rapids Hotel along the Wabash. This hotel was a few miles north of town, and was near a dam that is no longer. The hotel is no longer, either, having closed in 1929 after a fire. The foundation remains on private property, and I only know that by reading – don’t try to find it yourself, the area is marked with purple posts (which signify no trespassing). However, a small stairway from the road to where the hotel was remains, and is painted over on occasion.

Leaving Mt. Carmel, a few miles down the road was a green sign for the two-house, railroad crossing community of Maud. The first thought that popped into my head was “And then there’s Maud.” You have to know the theme to the 1970s TV show “Maude” to know that reference.

Another sign that caught my eye was for Beall Woods State Park, named for a local family. As its name pun-fully suggests, it is indeed all woods.

White County

Crossville is another town along Route 1, and it serves as a crossroads of Routes 1 and 14. It was a rail crossing back in the day, too, which gave the town its name. Route 14 used to be the former U.S. 440, an alternate route of U.S. 40 (crossed by Route 1 in Marshall). There is a bridge taking Route 14 over the Wabash, the New Harmony Toll Bridge (named for the town on the Indiana side), but it has been closed for nearly a decade as it is needing major repair. The route currently ends where the bridge barricades are. Crossville also is home to this uniquely-designed barber shop with its exterior painted in a hippie motif. Also, another sighting of this game that I don’t know about.

Grayville is where people who formerly crossed into New Harmony now cross the river, on Interstate 64. The town has a preserved rail car and a stone marker noting where the Wabash once crested at its highest point. In Carmi, there is a giant grocery man in the form of a fiberglass statue, and he’s holding a grocery bag. There is also one in nearby Eldorado.

Ridgway

Ridgway is a town just a mile from Route 1 in Gallatin County – and a town I keep misspelling in this draft because there is no “e” in it. We are one county away from the end of our trip. Ridgway was home to (as of 2026) one of the few small public schools that has won an Illinois high school state basketball championship, having done so in 1973 (the second year of the Class A/AA system). Keeping with my interest in seeing former high school campuses, this was a place for me to visit. The school building has been remodeled into a private home, but the gym addition is now private storage. A overgrown baseball diamond sits at one corner at the edge of town. Single-hoop concrete blocks sit across the street from the school building.

When driving through, I discovered that the town also is home to the Dinger Bats baseball bat company, made here in town. Some of the notable players who have used their bats include Eric Chavez, Hunter Pence, Jazz Chisholm and Kyle Schwarber.

Equality

Going closer to Route 1’s end, it crosses with state Route 13 near Equality. West takes travelers to Harrisburg – a major city in southern Illinois – and east takes them to Shawneetown and Old Shawneetown. The Shawneetown trips will be highlighted in a separate entry. I stayed two nights in Harrisburg while exploring the end of Route 1 and the side adventures from it.

Equality is west of Route 1 along Route 13. Route 142 ends in the middle of downtown, where the Ohio River Scenic Byway headquarters is. The town also has a roundabout with the water tower in the middle, along with a monument to Mexican War and Civil War General Michael Kelly Lawler, who was from here.

The former Equality High School building is long gone, now the site of Cardinal Park – named for the school’s former athletics mascot. However, the building’s concrete footprint remains: It’s a polygon now surfaced in concrete, and those who wish to play basketball can bring their own hoops. The school’s basketball history has a notable connection with Dolph Stanley, a coach who won nearly 800 high school games from leading EHS to the state tournament in 1934 to coaching at Keith Country Day in Rockford in the early 1980s. I think it’s great that at least some part of the old building remains, as other teardowns often result in the footprint being entirely removed. Equality’s grade school still stands, since closed, and appears to be in private use.

Going back to Route 1 from Equality meant a trip through the Illinois Salines National Historic Site. It’s where salt was mined in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s a winding path through a forest, with some remnants of foundations remaining, but well away from the road. I could find no historical kiosk there, which is a shame because there is a uniquely interesting fact about this place regarding slavery: It was legal in these minds well after Illinois abolished slavery in upon its 1818 statehood.

Cave-in-Rock

We’re at the end of Route 1.

Hardin County is the final county on this drive. There is an intersection with state Route 146 at a place called Love’s Corner. Route 146 takes travelers along the Ohio River and into Illinois’ Fluorite Country. I took a trip down this road and will share it in a future post.

The small community of Cave-in-Rock is where Route 1 ends after more than 300 miles. It’s a unique name for a town, but only so because there is a cave there along the Ohio River that is actually a rock formation (seen at the top of this post). This can be found at Cave-in-Rock State Park. There is a long stairway down from the small parking area to the river bottom, and there’s a short walk from the landing to the cave.

Cave-in-Rock was a notable hideout for people on the run from the law, even into the gangster era of the 1920s. The area eventually became a state park. I mention this again because funding for state parks hasn’t been so great in recent years. I mention that because there are a few portions of this historic rock that have been vandalized with writing utensils and spray paint. It’s a real shame that natural history has been deliberately vandalized like this.

The cave only goes in about 100 feet or so, and there’s a carved out narrow walking path leading people to its end. Walkers often have to cling to the edges of the rock to maneuver around it, and that has led to years of body oils smoothing out the 90-degree edges of the path.

The park also has a restaurant. The view of the Ohio River is nice, considering that it is wider at this point than most points of the Mississippi (except for around Thomson). Even being wider than the Mississippi in southern Illinois, the Ohio River ends at the Mississippi in Cairo.

Cave-in-Rock, the town, also is home to an old opera house. One of the businesses in town is a rock shop, Palmer’s Trading Post, which has mined fluorite from the region. The building was a former gas and service station long ago, and now has many small rocks and fluorite of varying degrees of purple/pink for sale. The owner also gave me some history of the town, including the fate and location of its former high school – something I was looking to find out.

The fate of the former high school is an unfortunate one. After it closed, it was remodeled into a house, and that was the last update we had about it on Illinois High School Glory Days (where I am a co-author). After a quick glance at Google Maps failed to pin down a possible site of it for me, I asked the trading post owner about it. He told me where it was, and that a large gas explosion destroyed the building a few years ago. Even though there was nothing to see there now, I still drove by it (it is located on a large hill). The steps were still there. That’s it.

Route 1 ends at a ferry crossing at the Ohio River. Across from it, Kentucky Route 91 takes travelers past a couple of Amish grocery stores en route to Marion. I had hoped to board the ferry and visit one of those stores, however, this was a day of high wind and the ferry was closed because of it. I didn’t get to go into Kentucky this way has planned, but I did complete the Route 1 trip. Nearby the ferry site are salvaged old ferries and towboats from a long time ago.

Final thoughts

Traveling along Route 1 was an eye-opener for me to see all of the neat local places that travelers wouldn’t have seen if they were on the interstates. The route has a lot of history to it, from Chicago to the Revolutionary War. It’s certainly earned its distinction of being “1” in “Route 1.”

As mentioned here and elsewhere in this Route 1 series, there are three side trips I took along the way. One is to the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Indiana – about 10 miles east of Chrisman. Another is to Shawneetown and Old Shawneetown. Another is along the Ohio River from Cave-in-Rock to Golconda. I will write about these three adventures soon.

I hope you enjoyed this series.

[Writer’s note: Part III was completed in short time, so if there’s anything else that comes to mind along this stretch, I will post it later.]