Day 5. Route 66 in Missouri, Rolla to Springfield.
Missouri has some fine stretches of the old road. That is, when one can get on them.
Parts of Route 66 in Missouri have been completely eliminated and one is forced to get on the interstate. Thankfully, it is never for too long and then it’s back on the surviving portions of the old road.
In the first picture one can see an abandoned portion of the road right by the interstate. The second picture is an original four lane segment which is very rare as I understand it.
Every so often an old portion of the road is closed and one needs to turn around. Usually, it’s signed. On the drive one of the old bridges I approached was closed to traffic. I did see the sign but wanted to see the old bridge anyway. I like the bridges. (There will be more to come!)
I started to see grazing cattle as I got closer to the middle point of the drive through Missouri. Beef cattle.
Why the replica of the Hubble Telescope in one of the pictures in this set? It is a one-quarter size, 1,200 pound replica of the Hubble Space Telescope. The renowned astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble was born on Nov. 20, 1889, in Marshfield MO; the telescope replica is located on the west side of the town square.
My second trading post. I didn’t catch the name of the proprietor (pictured).
My destination this day was Springfield. Near the city in Republic MO was my last stop of the day: Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, the site (preserved by theNational Park Service) of the August 1861 Battle of Wilson’s Creek. As the NPS describes it (read more here), this was the first major Civil War battle fought west of the Mississippi, and a costly Southern victory. There were major casualties on both sides. The last three pictures were taken at “Bloody Hill,” the scene of the major battle: 2,500 Union and Confederate soldiers killed, wounded or missing after five hours of intense fighting. The farmhouse in the pictures was the makeshift Confederate field hospital.
