Historic National Road - Illinois
Historic National Road - Illinois is an All-American Road in Illinois. Within Illinois it covers roughly 160 miles. The map below shows its route. Use “Plan a drive” to open it in the Road Sorties route planner — already routing along Historic National Road - Illinois with scenic roads turned on, ready to add your own stops.
Illinois' stretch of the Historic National Road runs 164 miles from Marshall to East St. Louis, shadowed today by US 40 and Interstate 70. Built in the early 1800s as the first federally funded highway in the country, it carried settlers west under names like the Cumberland Road and National Pike before earning the nickname 'Main Street of America' as towns grew up along its path. Marshall, at the Indiana line, holds the oldest house still standing in Illinois; Vandalia served as the state's second capital from 1819 to 1839 and preserves the Vandalia State House, where both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas sat in the legislature; and Greenville, founded in 1815, has ties to the Underground Railroad and a long-running college. Illinois' segment is part of a six-state National Road corridor recognized as an All-American Road, the top tier of the National Scenic Byways program, reflecting the road's role in opening the Midwest to settlement rather than any single scenic vista.
- Marshall
- Vandalia State House
- Greenville
- 164 miles
- All-American Road
- Cumberland Road/National Pike
- Lincoln and Douglas
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What is an All-American Road?
All-American Roads are the top tier of America's National Scenic Byways. To earn the title a road has to be a destination in its own right — offering features so exceptional, across several intrinsic qualities (scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological or recreational), that they can't be found anywhere else.