The Greater Chicago Southland Road Experience

  This is an experience you cannot have anywhere else in the country in a single day.

This is far more than just a driving tour. It is a journey down four of America's most historic roads leading to little-known secrets, hidden historical treasures, and unforgettable discoveries.

As you travel along the legendary Dixie Highway, the ancient Sauk Trail, the historic Lincoln Highway, and multiple alignments of the world-famous Route 66, you'll discover places and stories that most people have no idea even exist.

You will experience over forty intriguing points of interest, including authentic 1920s Prohibition-era speakeasies filled with stories of days gone by and that are still open to the public.

Stand at the marked burial site of the world's first nuclear reactor, secretly built beneath the University of Chicago's football stadium stands during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, then buried in a desolate, protected wooded area many miles away in a forest preserve that is open to the public. 

Follow ancient Native American trails that eventually became some of America's earliest highways, and search for prehistoric fossils hundreds of millions of years old at one of the country’s most productive fossil sites open to the public.

Along the journey, you'll discover famous movie filming locations and the places that inspired Hollywood productions. You'll also visit a protected sacred Native American healing pond where, hundreds of years ago, tribe members would travel from throughout the Midwest for its reported healing properties.

The discoveries continue with the Chicagoland Speedway, home to NASCAR racing, and a recreated 1800s village featuring authentic buildings dating back to the 1830s.

You'll encounter some of the most haunted locations in the country and travel a scenic bluff road overlooking deep ravines and valleys carved by massive glaciers of the last Ice Age.

You can also tour a bunker of one of the nation's largest World War II ammunitions facilities and visit historic canal towns where magnificent limestone buildings still stand as reminders of another era.

Tour cell blocks in a pre-Civil War prison that housed over 1,000 prisoners around the time the war ended, and stand in awe of its towering, massive limestone walls located just feet from the road.

Walk along the banks of a river where Native Americans, voyageurs, and fur traders traveled by canoe hundreds of years ago, and along the way you'll experience iconic landmarks such as the Gemini Giant, the Polka Dot Restaurant, the Rialto Theater, a building that was built the same year as the battle of the Alamo and a few you can tour built just a few years later, the Crossroads of the Nation Landmark and many more hidden gems that make this region unlike anywhere else in America.

Nowhere else in the country can you experience this remarkable combination of historic highways, hidden history, natural wonders, roadside icons, and unforgettable attractions in a single day.

Enjoy your journey.