Between the great cities of Chicago and St. Louis, there are 300 miles of adventure, history, culinary delights, and quirky attractions. This is the "Land of Lincoln" and roadside giants. There are cozy motels, cozy diners, and Cozy Dogs. Interstate 55 will speed travelers to their destination, but Route 66 offers something more. It goes through the hearts of the towns, wandering onto old brick pavement far from the roar of the interstate. Historic restaurants like Lou Mitchell's in Chicago, the Palms Grill in Atlanta, and the Ariston Cafe in Litchfield still keep their coffee pots warm. Waitresses, pump jockeys, gangsters, cops, and politicians all gave the "Main Street of America" its distinctive personality, and their stories are within these pages. So slow down, take the next exit, and head toward the beckoning neon in the distance. Come explore Route 66 in Illinois--where the road began.

Route 66 Highway, first built in 1926-32, offers a fantastic variety of scenery and history. This segment of the highway, from the Gateway to the West through the beautiful Ozarks, is organized in over 300 vintage postcards and color photos that capture travel on "The Mother Road" across the "Show Me State." There are stops at "no-tell motels," gas stations, cafes, roadside stands, and good, old-fashioned tourist traps. The detailed text provides histories at each stop, including icons such as Coral Court, The Diamonds, Meramec Caverns, and many more. This book is organized first chronologically and then features a tour through the Meramec Valley, from Leasburg to Rolla, the Ozarks, Lebanon to Springfield, and Springfield to the "Ghost Section." Postcard values are included in the captions. For all who enjoy the romance of the open road, this book is a treasure.

By the time Route 66 received its official numerical designation in 1926, picture postcards had become popular travel souvenirs. At the time, these postcards with colorful images served as advertisements for roadside businesses. While cherished by collectors, these postcard depictions do not always reflect reality. They often present instead a view enhanced for promotional purposes. Portrait of Route 66 lets us see for the first time the actual photographs from which the postcards were made, and in describing how the production process worked, introduces us to an extraordinary archival collection, adding new history to this iconic road. The Curt Teich Postcard Archives, held at the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois, contains one of the nation's largest collections of Route 66 images, including thousands of job files for postcards produced by Curt Teich and Company of Chicago. T. Lindsay Baker combed these files to choose the best examples of postcards and their accompanying photographs not only to reflect well-known sites along the route but also to demonstrate the relationships between photographs and their resulting postcards. The photographs show the reality of the locations that customers sometimes wanted ""improved"" for aesthetic purposes in creating the postcards. Such alterations included removing utility poles or automobile traffic and rendering overcast skies partly cloudy. This book will interest historians of art and design as well as the worldwide audiences of Route 66 aficionados and postcard collectors. For its mining of an invaluable and little-known photographic archive and depiction of high-quality photographs that have not been seen before, Portrait of Route 66 will be irresistible to all who are interested in American history and culture.