They were called “public enemies” -- gangsters whose crimes were so notorious, so well-publicized across the nation that they became celebrities. And sometimes public enemies like Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd were seen traveling Route 66 in Laclede County.

By 1993, Interstate 44 had displaced Route 66 as the main east-west highway through Laclede County for 36 years. Many businesses that had depended on Route 66 traffic for survival had withered away or adjusted their appeal to local customers. Some businesses that had been built to take advan…

Kelly Hackler’s dream of restoring the historic Twin Oaks property on Route 66 west of Phillipsburg is starting to come true.

One week from now, travelers on Route 66 just west of Phillipsburg should be able to see the original front of the Twin Oaks station for the first time in years.

Now Route 66 travelers will know that the Underpass Cafe served breakfast, lunch and dinner and also had a gift shop.

The restoration of the exterior of the former Underpass Cafe at Phillipsburg should be complete by the end of this year, according to a timetable set by the Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society board at its meeting Tuesday.

Sharon Haight remembers accompanying her granddaddy in the 1950s to Lebanon’s ice house to buy blocks of ice, then chopping the ice with her siblings for the overnight guests at Camp Joy.

When the Weaver family bought the old Wood & Goss DX station in 2014 to expand Weaver Auto Sales, some suggested that the Route 66-era building had become an eyesore that should be torn down.

Bronwen Palilla remembers moving to Lebanon in the 1990s and admiring the beautiful three-story home, then used as a real-estate office, on the north side of Elm Street, also known as Historic Route 66, at Sherman Avenue.

Don’t expect to get a burger and fries there, but if you drive past the old Underpass Café now, it’ll look more as it did when it served meals to Route 66 motorists in the 1950s.

I grew up 3/4 mile west of Eden on Route 66, which is now on the north side of Interstate 44. After college, I moved to the St. Louis area, employed by McDonnell Aircraft. Taking early retirement in 1996, my wife and I returned to this farm, which was settled in 1853 by my great-great-grandp…

Tommy Speaker remembers the day a big four-door car pulled around to the back of his grandfather’s gas station on Route 66 in Lebanon. Three or four people, one of them a woman, got out. They placed violin cases on a picnic table and laid down on the grass to rest. Tommy’s grandfather, Tom B…

It was the Eden of Route 66. For more than 40 years, Eden Resort, on a hill just west of the Gasconade River on the south side of Route 66, was a self-proclaimed paradise for thousands of travelers, vacationers and fishermen. "It was a showplace,'' Hugh McClure Jr. of nearby Hazelgreen recalled.

Kelly Hackler bought 7.75 acres west of Phillipsburg last year so he would have a place close to home for fishing. The property includes an acre-and-a-half pond where he has caught some nice catfish.

In 1993, Wilma Wilson Atkins, a native of the Sleeper area, wrote a book for her granddaughters about her life and the life of her husband, David, who died in 1991. This is an excerpt from the chapter on Route 66, including stories about its construction through 13 acres of the Atkins family farm in 1926. Mrs. Atkins died in 2007. Published with the permission of the Atkins’ daughter, Naomi Atkins Townsend.

Sixty years ago next week – Thursday, Aug. 8, 1957 – was the end of the road for the Route 66 we know and love in Lebanon today.

If it had been any other highway, Lebanon would have forgotten about Route 66 at 10:45 a.m. Aug. 8, 1957, when the State Highway Commission opened an 8.2-mile stretch of Interstate 44 that bypassed the city.

As I ponder the many things that have happened, I remember my hometown of Richmond, Ind.

On the last full day of his life, Bernie Bollig returned to the parking lot of the former Big Wig Drive-In to reminisce about the two decades he and wife Patty operated their popular restaurant on Lebanon’s Route 66.