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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)