Keeping You On The Mother Road Volume 2 | Page 40

Dairy Queen By John & Lenore Weiss As the story goes… The first Dairy Queen opened on June 22, 1940, at 501 N. Chicago Street, Joliet, Illinois. Chicago Street is original Route 66. It was named Dairy Queen because the founder believed this new tasty treat was the Queen of dairy products. The building still stands. Illinois Joliet Continued From Page 37 JOLIET AREA Chicago Portage One-half mile north of the Harlem Avenue exit from Interstate 55 is where we find the Chicago Portage National Historic Site (4600 S. Harlem, www.chicagoportage.org). Here, a steel sculpture depicts the events of September 1673 when Marquette and Joliet canoed from the Des Plaines River to the Chicago River, thus crossing a divide between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds. Joliet would later say that “it would only be Continued Page 47 38 Produced & Printed In The USA • Keeping You On The Mother Road • 2012-2013