History
The state of Illinois was founded in 1818. One of its first governmental tasks was the construction of primitive dirt roads between the three pioneer villages of Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and Shawneetown. Illinois Route 13 is a distant descendant of most of the Cahokia-Shawneetown route, and has a claim to be one of the oldest state highways in Illinois.
Illinois Route 13 did not take its current physical form, though, until after the enactment of the Good Roads Movement paving program in 1918. The statewide plan standardized the alignment of this road and numbered it Illinois 13.
Except for a few alignment changes, Illinois 13 has remained the same since its inception in 1918. In 1937 it was rerouted around Sparta (now Illinois Route 4 and Illinois Route 154), replacing Illinois Route 152 in the process.
The other reroute took place between 1944 and 1947, when Illinois 13 took over a new highway (then called U.S. Route 460) in and around Belleville. The old route became Alternate Illinois 13. In 1947 it was moved back to Bond Avenue. Later, U.S. 460 would be dropped and replaced with Illinois Route 15.
Read more about this topic: Illinois Route 13
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“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)