(gentle music) - It was old 66 and came down old 66 to Springfield, so it was my first journey down was my wedding journey.

- [Producer] Oh my gosh.

(gentle music continues) - We have a new exhibit that is about Route 66.

This year is the Centennial, and so we have an exhibit here at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield that talks about Route 66.

When people are here looking at our exhibit, they can actually listen t some of the oral histories that we have produced.

- We conducted a hundred oral histories of people who had memories of driving the road during its heyday or who are actively working to promote the road today.

Those memories live inside those and they were kind enough to sha and, you know, bring us along on that journey.

- I started about the same time that Route 66 was decommissioned and basically replaced with I-55 in Illinois, which runs as we all know from Chicago to St.

Louis.

And even parts of the old Route or what we think of as historic Route 66 today are under I-55 and impossible to or impossible Know that you're on a historic road.

- Oh, like the road is literally on top of the old road?

- [Erika] So when they visit this exhibition, they will see vintage items from They'll see different sections that highlight what it was like to travel on th to eat along the road, to work along the road, the types of attractions.

- This is a car seat from mid-ce and it just represents the Wild of traveling Route 66 during the Interspersed throughout the exhi we have these touch screens where we have various topics that we talk about relating to R - A girlfriend and I took a road trip and we drove Route 66 all the way to California.

- [Producer] Did you really?

- Yes.

- [Producer] Oh my gosh.

So when would this have been?

- It would've been in 1962.

- Under the Friday night lights, and our football stadium adjoined Route 66.

And so it just ran right through our community.

And so the traffic that comes through there, the diversity of people that comes through there, it's quite fascinating.

- I believe we are the oldest auto repair on Route 66, as well as the oldest tire and auto repair in America.

- [Amanda] This exhibit and this subject matter has definitely like brought families together just to kind of talk about maybe family vacations that they have experienced toget and kind of comparing road trave and just things in general like now versus then.

I think it's been a spark of con between the generations, which was one of our goals.

- They built the interstate and put a fence around the travelers that traveled the area of Route 66.

And so they were no longer friends, they were strangers.

So before the fence, people involved in accidents would be welcomed into one's hom After the interstate you shouldn't cross the fence because you were a trespasser.

And people's attitude along the completely changed with the inte - I feel like it's important that everybody knows that their story matters, right?

Like, we talked to a hundred peo Like I said, nobody was famous, but they all had this amazing insight to share.

So coming in, I hope that people that their own memories, their own family histories are v and need to be preserved and rec And another reason is that things change so quickly.

And when I was going into this, I thought like road travel, you know, big deal.

We still travel on the road.

That's nothing new.

And then come to like realize that traveling on the road in the 1950s and '60s is like completely different than the 21st century.

Each generation experiences something different, reinterprets it.

Route 66 is this living road that's constantly being reinvent for every single generation and every single traveler that experiences it.

It's all part of its big, beauti and, you know, worth recording.

- The more that we talk t people who have ties to the road the more that we found out that, you know, places are important and buildings and structures and but people by far are the most important part of the road.

- Finally, in September 2013, I left Chicago with my wife for my American dream.

The entire Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, an incredible journey that changed my life.