Illinois Roads - US 20/12/41

US 20, US 12/20, US 12/20/41



Business US 20 WB at Perryville Rd. in Rockford. The terribly named Burpee Museum is responsible for dinosaurs popping up on signs around Rockford. It's named after Harry and Della Burpee, which should just further the jokes your kids are making in the car as you read this to them. (All good parents read my website to their children. It improves their grammar and vocabularies. For example, notice how "grammar" remained singular but "vocabularies" was pluralized. It's frickin' genius. Okay, don't read the word "frickin'" to children under age 6.)


EB button copy at what's now IL 390. Fortunately, the signs were designed to fit a shield, so it can stay up for years longer.


US 12 just can't escape its shield woes. These unfortunate souls are on Chicago Ave. SEB at its end, with the Chicago Skyway bridge over the Calumet River in the background.


I'm giving you plenty of views of what appears to be an ordinary drawbridge for a reason. This is the partially repainted 95th Street Bridge, US 12/20, eastbound over the Calumet River. This is the bridge that the Blues Brothers jumped in their movie, and after rewatching the scene, there's a good chance they were jumping in this very direction.


Looking south (upriver) at a railroad bridge, with the Chicago Skyway again in the background.

Older crossbucks just to the east.


US 12/20 EB come to US 41 and turn south to join it. In the opposite direction, I'm therefore junctioning two routes I'm already on, but I'll accept that for the old US 20 shield. For once, US 12 has a normal shield, and I hate it.


US 12/20/41 EB/SB under the Skyway, I-90.


US 12/20 WB and US 41 NB on Indianapolis Ave., paralleling the Skyway until they get to Ewing Ave. and turn north. The bridge in the background is the same Skyway bridge that you've been seeing throughout this page.


Onto Ewing Ave. and under the Skyway to meet my EB photo.

Onto US 12 alone
Onto US 41 alone


Into Iowa on US 20
Into Indiana on US 20
Onto Elgin-O'Hare Expressway
Up onto the Chicago Skyway, I-90
See more of Chicago
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