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, but for purposes of writing about Route 1, I will write from north to south. I didn’t travel straight up to down on this trip as originally planned. I delayed the stretch from Chicago to Crete due to a rise in immigration enforcement and protest activity in Chicago on the day I wanted to start my trip. Instead, I began in suburban Crete and traveled south. I picked up the Chicago stretch during Day 5.

I thought it would be best to break down this trip by town or region, using them as bookmarks for writing what is going to be a long list of interesting sights and places. Let’s start with Chicago.

***Follow along through photographs by clicking a new window in my Part I Photo Album!***

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

Chicago

Route 1 presently begins from the north at Interstate 57 in the Roseland neighborhood. However, from the route’s beginning until 1957, the beginning used to be at U.S. Route 66 at the Art Institute. Several highway designations that went into the city were being discontinued right around this time, and Route 1 was one of them.

The Blackstone Hotel, on the southwest corner of Michigan and Balbo, was the site of the “Smoke Filled Room” during the 1920 Republican Convention where Warren Harding was nominated as President. Route 1 had only been a highway for two years at that point, making the hotel an early Route 1 historical point.

Going south from the Loop, Route 1 went south on Michigan Avenue to 60th Street, where it jogged west to State Street. From 31st Street south, Michigan was the southern part of a one-way split, with Indiana Avenue handling traffic going north (traffic from State Street turned east on 61st Street to reach Indiana). This goes through the Motor Row District, and the Bronzeville and Washington Park neighborhoods. On the northeast corner of State and Marquette, there is a mural of Michael Jordan on the side of a gas station building.

At 63rd and State, this is the site of the tragic Green Hornet Streetcar Disaster in 1950, which killed 34 after a street car collided with a gasoline truck. Despite the tragedy, no memorial is at this intersection.

On State Street, going south, a small segment of the former alignment is no more, due to freeway construction. Route 1 used to veer off from State onto Vincennes Avenue, but Vincennes was cut off and currently ends at Wentworth Ave. The current jog to follow this former alignment goes west on 69th, south on Wentworth, and veering right on Vincennes. After about a mile on Vincennes, the old Route 1 veers left onto Halstead Ave., where it proceeds south out of the city. The “begin” sign for Route 1 is at a BP gas station on Halstead and 99th. (For a brief period in the late 1950s-early 1960s, Route 1 actually was on the current Bishop Ford Freeway to the former Balmoral Park Racetrack, but was reverted back to the former alignment).

One interesting piece of advertising on the city’s Halstead stretch of Route 1 is an old painted ad for the Lerose Coal Co. at 123rd St. The color is original to when the ad was painted in the 1950s, with no fading. This was possible because a building constructed next to it covered the ad for more than 60 years. When that newer building came down, the Lerose ad once more saw the light of day with its original colors intact.

The Loop was the final stop on this big adventure, and it was night when I arrived. This gave me an opportunity to explore with my camera (a Canon Rebel T100) with trying to capture some decent night pictures. I’m not perfect at this yet, but I’m trying. I stopped at a Whole Foods parking lot on Roosevelt to visually explore night pictures with the camera. This might be another photo album in the future.

South suburbs

Leaving Chicago and crossing over the Little Calumet River, the first suburbs that Route 1 goes through are Riverdale, Phoenix, Harvey and Homewood. The Harvey area has seen better days, but there’s one interesting sight off in the distance west of a crossing of railroad tracks in Phoenix: a battlement style top of a concrete grain elevator. Battlements are castle-like tops of buildings, similar to what the top of a rook looks like in chess. These tops often were made to give simple structures some sort of class to them, and these are common around houses (and this old fire station in Racine, Wisconsin). To see one on a grain elevator was neat.

In Chicago Heights, Route 1 takes a quick jog around what’s left of downtown, but it goes near the stately Bloom High School, which is an Art Deco building with a large front tower. I enjoy architecture because it’s a fad that has survived many trends over the past 100 years; while modern buildings are more practical, older buildings seem more majestic to me, and are neat to look at. Bloom High also has a blue turf football field close to its campus. That fad began with Boise State University’s surface, and it’s caught on to Chicago area schools such as Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep in the city and at St. Francis in Wheaton.

As mentioned, Crete was my actual starting point on this adventure. This town has street signs made of wood, something that isn’t often seen with the more practical features of reflective metal signs. The wood signs give this suburb a unique charm to it. Traveling south on Route 1, the former Balmoral Park Racetrack stands shuttered after many decades of horse racing. It’s been redeveloped recently. At this point, Route 1 makes a curve and Ts onto the southern end of the Bishop Ford Freeway (Illinois Route 394). There is a road stub there the old road dead ends, and it’s been that way for more than 60 years. At this point, we exit what’s considered to be the Chicago Metro area, and enter towns that relate more with Kankakee.

Kankakee area (Beecher to Papineau)

Leaving the Chicago metro area, we get to see more of the familiar cornfield that will be the norm for the rest of the Route 1 journey. The first town on this stretch is Beecher, and we are still in Will County at this point. Beecher is a growing town with a few new subdivisions, and is also home to the Princess Cafe, a supper club atmosphere place to eat at. Although I wasn’t hungry at this point, its worn-out painted sign with a large lobster on it caught my attention. Beecher also is a town that could lead to rather negative puns; the wordsmith in me caught attention to a sign that read “Beecher Florist,” and I thought, “I would never beat my florist, she’s a nice lady.” The other interesting place in town is a mausoleum at St. Luke Cemetery, which is on the National Register of Historic Places as one of the oldest (1913) mausoleums in the nation (and certainly in a small town). A house along the driveway to the cemetery has the largest wind chimes I’ve ever seen (an example of a “what’s this” leading to another “what’s this,” which makes these trips fun in my opinion).

In the case of the mausoleum, this was one of those instances where I saw a sign that read “national landmark” and hit the brake to do a turnabout. I didn’t know about this beforehand, as with many sites on this journey. The mausoleum was locked on this day, and unfortunately there’s nothing there to tell its story, so I had to search online to find its historic meaning.

Grant Park was the next stop (no, not the Chicago park), and it’s a town with a large collection of grain silos looming over it. The sight led me to try a passing train picture, CSX goes through town, as soon as I heard a train horn. There is a place to park to grab such a picture (as many railroad enthusiasts often do), and also nearby is an informational sign about the Dixie Highway. Route 1 runs concurrent at times with several other routes with their own names: Dixie, Hubbard and Vincennes the more notable ones. The Dixie Highway connects Chicago with Miami, and leaves Route 1 in the town of Chrisman (which will be highlighted in Part II). Grant Park also is home to a bar with a funny name: the Dunn Inn (done in).

In Momence, the first of several historic and preserved railroad depots catches my eye, and it is now the William and Phyllis Munyon Memorial Depot. The town is also home to the Earl Schoeffner Farm Museum. Leaving town, there is a historical marker noting the path’s history as the Hubbard Trail (see the photo at the top of this page to read it).

St. Anne was next, and in the high school sports world, sometimes its high school gets mistaken for being a Catholic one. No, it’s just the name of the town, but there is a vintage-1872 limestone church of the same name on the highway.

Papineau was the first stop of mine that wasn’t on Route 1, but as I’m driving on it I thought it would be worth it to take a few minutes and see some of these towns that aren’t too far off the road (3-5 miles each way), just to see if there’s something that catches my eye. Papineau is home to the Papineau Locker, whose front siding is similar to an old barn door from the 19th century. Its school building still stands, but sits unused after being a dwelling; the school’s bright red bricks caught my eye as being interesting for its time – maybe it was painted at some time, but typically with such architecture of the time, the bricks are more darker maroon. The town of Beaverville wasn’t too far away to the east, and there’s a neat looking octagonal limestone church building there.

Iroquois County (Martinton to Wellington)

Back on Route 1, I went through a town that had recently made the news for a grain bin disaster. The week before, in Martinton, a concrete grain silo gave way and spilled more than a million pounds of soybeans all over the set of silos. When I drove by, there were still many piles of soybeans left, and the broken silo had been leveled off.

Watseka was next, and the interesting Art Deco architecture intrigue caught my attention again: the Watseka Theatre has its original exterior (when some towns covered theirs during the “Space Age” 1960s), and is an active performing arts venue with plays and concerts – notable for a town of its size in the northern half of Illinois.

Milford is the next town, and this was my lunch break for Day 1. I ate at a place called Bert’s, and, as with many trips I take, try to sample the largest cheeseburger a place has. Bert’s was a good one: a 1-pounder with four slices of cheese (two more than what one usually sees), and looked larger than other 1-pounders I’ve seen. I liked this burger, and recommend it if you’re a big burger lover. The town also has a neat old police station and railroad depot (now its town hall), and also is where a retired Buzz Bomb from World War II is at the town park (I forgot to get a good pic of this); its story told at Roadside America. The park also clearly explains, in large font, that Milford got its name for being the site of a mill on a ford.

In Wellington, this was the first town I got to make a note to a side reason why I go on these trips. I am an author for Illinois High School Glory Days, a website that is all about closed high schools in the state. We’ve documented more than a thousand on it. Wellington is one of them that has been written about, and I try to visit each town that has a school on the website to see if there’s anything quick to update. Wellington has two shuttered school buildings, it’s high school and grade school. Both are standing, but are both in rough shape. The high school had plans for private reuse, but that appears to have been dashed. Most times when I’m driving through, I just make a note about the building’s current status; on this trip, I didn’t have time to browse through libraries and maps for more research. If I can flesh out missing information on a school’s page, I try to make that happen when I can.

***Follow along through photographs by clicking a new window in my Part I Photo Album!***

More old school buildings (Hoopeston, Rossville, Alvin)

Old high schools were on my mind for the rest of Day 1, and there were two in Hoopeston: the John Greer school and the town’s high school. The Greer building is long since gone, but there are reminders of it remaining on its site, as well as the old gym building that has been converted to classrooms for a public grade school. Hoopeston used to be a larger town decades ago, and its downtown buildings are larger than a current town of similar size. Downtown also has a vintage movie theater, the Lorraine.

Rossville was interesting because the week AFTER I went through, there was an Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame program at its high school, featuring memories of hoops teams from closed high schools in eastern Illinois (Dave, IHSGD founder, spoke at the event). If only I rolled through town a week later. The building’s name stone above an entryway had Art Deco lettering (take a drink for how many times I mention “Art Deco” in this series of entries).

The Rossville school building later became home to Rossville-Alvin, another closed high school. Alvin is the next town over, and I was able to log an update to its remaining physical reminders of its old school building: It used to have a preserved brick archway, but it was destroyed a few years ago during a nearby road construction project. Not all updates I log are good ones.

Any time I see a brown “Historical Marker” sign, I put on the brakes. This also happened at a point between Rossville and Alvin on Route 1. However, I could not reach the marker because it was on the other side of a muddy ditch. So I didn’t know what it was. Exploring online, it’s a stone mile marker of the Vincennes Trail.

The final true stop of Day 1 was at Mann’s Chapel, between Rossville and Alvin. This is the oldest standing church building in Vermillion County, dating back to 1857. It’s still used for the rare event, and its brick exterior and vane at the top of its steeple are well preserved.

Taking a break in Danville

For reasons I would rather explain in private, I do not recommend staying at the Candle-lite Motel. But I survived for two nights because I traveled alone. I saved maybe $125 doing this, but was it worth it, I don’t know. It made me not want to do this again during the rest of this trip, and I spent the other two nights detouring to a brand-name hotel in Harrisburg.

I explore a little of Danville in Day 2, as well as make it to Paris before going back for my second night stay. Part 2 of this trip log will cover the stretch from Danville to Lawrenceville, and Part 3 from Lawrenceville to Cave-in-Rock. The earlier part of Day 3 I spent traveling from Paris to Equality, before a two-night stay in Harrisburg. Day 4 was spent in the towns along the eastern edge of the Shawnee National Forest, and Day 5 was spent largely on the interstate back to Chicago.

Parts II and III of this adventure is coming in the future. I will be knee-deep in journalism work in January, so I can only get around to these when I can.

***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 II photo album and see more things that I didn’t describe in this trip log!