Fred Walk, a high school teacher, drove by Route 66 every day on his commute to work. Adjacent to Interstate 55, the old road had been barricaded since the 1970s and had no use.

Walk, a social studies teacher at Normal Community High School in central Illinois, always thought “something could be done with it.”

And so for two decades, an abandoned stretch of Route 66 in Towanda became a central part of his curriculum, starting with high school students and later moving to a college course.

Collaborating with a Normal Community High School American literature instructor, Walk devised an innovative Route 66 curriculum. While reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, students would research migration patterns during the Great Depression. How did the real people who were the basis for Steinbeck’s characters get to California? He developed a curriculum that used Route 66 to “engage (students) in local and national history.”

In the late 1990s, Walk began to see the old asphalt paralleling the interstate as a “primary source” to study Route 66. He envisioned a linear parkway along the abandoned alignment where students would research and interpret the Mother Road.

But a real-world challenge soon arrived. Walk learned that the Illinois Department of Transportation had plans to demolish a Route 66 bridge that would be the centerpiece of the parkway.

Erected in 1945, the Money Creek Bridge — a graceful concrete girder structure — posed a problem. The opportunity for students to learn about Route 66 would fall apart without it.

Walk realized that the threat created a “great opportunity to engage the students in activism.” He got his students to mobilize, starting a petition to save the bridge. Collecting over 1,000 signatures, they approached their state legislators. Seeing a good story, the politicians supported the effort.

After numerous bureaucratic hoops, the bridge was saved and officially became part of the planned parkway.

In the early 2000s, Walk worked with students to spruce up the road and introduce interpretation. Students, some enrolled in the high school’s industrial arts program, created eight mural-type markers representing the eight states along Route 66.

Their work over the years became the “Historic Route 66: A Geographical Journey,” an interpretive parkway that itself became a Route 66 attraction. In his EZ 66 Guide, Jerry McClanahan directed travelers to it, pointing out the Burma Shave arrangement of the signage and marveling that the trail had fliers printed in several languages.

In 2005, after 33 years, Walk retired from high school teaching. But the Towanda project didn’t suffer with his exit. He took the basic idea to his new job — teaching in the history department of Illinois State University at Normal. His students, who were being trained to teach history at the high school level, were instructed in the same research and civic engagement methodology that he had used at the high school.

Over 20 years in the making, the interpretive trail — now called the Towanda, Illinois Route 66 Parkway — is planted with trees and dotted with benches and shelters. It also works as a local bike trail. People from around the world use its path, absorbing Route 66’s history.

Towanda, Illinois Route 66 Parkway — is planted with trees and dotted with benches and shelters. It also works as a local bike trail. People from around the world use its path, absorbing Route 66’s history.

While Walk didn’t plan for it, the threat of the demolition of the Money Creek Bridge invigorated his approach, as the students got involved in preservation activism. Many of his former students — both at the high school and college — found his course was influential in their development. Walk is currently working on a project to recognize the very bridge that first challenged his Route 66 classroom.