Archer Avenue, sometimes known as Archer Road outside the

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

city limits, and also known as State Street only in

Lockport, Illinois Lockport is a city in Will County, Illinois, United States, located 30 miles southwest of Chicago. Per the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 26,094. The city was incorporated in 1853. It is situated along the Illinois a ...

and Fairmont, Illinois city limits, is a street running northeast-to-southwest between Chicago's Chinatown and Lockport. Archer follows the original trail crossing the

Chicago Portage The Chicago Portage was an ancient portage that connected the Great Lakes waterway system with the Mississippi River system. This connection provided comparatively easy access from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the Atlantic Ocean to the R ...

between the

Chicago River The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). The river is one of the reasons for Chicago's geographic importance: the related Chic ...

and the

Des Plaines River The Des Plaines River ( ) is a river that flows southward for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed May 13, 2011 through southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois''American H ...

, and parallels the path of the

Illinois and Michigan Canal The Illinois and Michigan Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In Illinois, it ran from the Chicago River in Bridgeport, Chicago to the Illinois River at LaSalle-Peru. The canal crossed the Chicago ...

and the Joliet Subdivision of the

Alton Railroad The Alton Railroad was the final name of a railroad linking Chicago to Alton, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; and Kansas City, Missouri. Its predecessor, the Chicago and Alton Railroad , was purchased by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1931 an ...

. As a main traffic artery, it has largely been replaced by the modern

Stevenson Expressway Stevenson is an English language patronymic surname meaning "son of Steven". Its first historical record is from pre-10th-century England. Another origin of the name is as a toponymic surname related to the place Stevenstone in Devon, England. Th ...

. The street was named after the first commissioner of the

, William Beatty Archer. One early map of Chicago (ca. 1830) listed what may have been the future Archer Road as "The Road to Widow Brown's".

Route description

The east end of Archer begins in Chicago's Chinatown, then passes through the

Bridgeport Bridgeport is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut and the fifth-most populous city in New England, with a population of 148,654 in 2020. Located in eastern Fairfield County at the mouth of the Pequonnock River on Long Is ...

, McKinley Park and Brighton Park neighborhoods on its way to Archer Heights and Garfield Ridge. Outside Chicago, Archer Avenue/Road passes through the villages of

Summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used only for ...

Justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...

, Willow Springs, and the southern edge of Lemont before terminating on the north side of Lockport. Between Summit and Lockport, Archer Avenue is designated as a part of

Illinois Route 171 Illinois Route 171 (IL 171) is a north–south state highway in northeastern Illinois. It runs from U.S. Route 6 in Illinois, U.S. Route 6 (US 6) in Joliet, Illinois, Joliet north to Illinois Route 72 at the Chicago–Park Ridge, Illi ...

Points of interest

Southwest of Lemont, Archer passes Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, site of numerous

Professional Golfers Association Professional Golfers Association may refer to: * Professional Golfers' Association (Great Britain and Ireland) * Professional Golfers' Association of America The Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA of America) is an American or ...

tournaments.

History

Historically, this section of Archer was a part of

Illinois Route 4 Illinois Route 4 is a major north–south highway that runs south from the Interstate 55 business loop around the state capital of Springfield, south to Illinois Route 13 just north of Murphysboro. This is a distance of . Route description I ...

, the original 1924 highway connecting

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

and Chicago. In 1926, Route 4 was rerouted to the north side of the

on an alignment that subsequently became

U.S. Route 66 U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) is one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The high ...

, and its former route on Archer was redesignated as Illinois Route 4A. By 1939, Route 4A had been extended along most of Archer Avenue into Downtown Chicago. In 1967, Route 4A was truncated back to Summit and merged into Illinois Route 171.

Historical sites

The former site of

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United Sta ...

and its predecessor, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Metallurgical Laboratory The Metallurgical Laboratory (or Met Lab) was a scientific laboratory from 1942 to 1946 at the University of Chicago. It was established in February 1942 and became the Argonne National Laboratory in July 1946. The laboratory was established i ...

in the forest preserve near Red Gate Woods, can be entered from an access road on Archer Avenue. This was once a secret

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

site, and is now known as the Site A/Plot M Disposal Site.

Chicago Pile-1 Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the first artificial nuclear reactor. On 2 December 1942, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 during an experiment led by Enrico Fermi. The secret development of the react ...

(CP-1), the world's first nuclear reactor, was moved from

Stagg Field Amos Alonzo Stagg Field is the name of two successive football fields for the University of Chicago. Beyond sports, the first Stagg Field (1893–1957), named for famed coach, Alonzo Stagg, is remembered for its role in a landmark scientific ac ...

to this site in 1943 and renamed Chicago Pile-2 (CP-2). The remains of CP-1, CP-2, and Chicago Pile-3 (CP-3) remain buried at this site. A defunct Playland Amusement Park opened in mid-summer of 1950 which, at the time, was located in Willow Springs, Illinois. Back then, Willow Springs used to be an unincorporated community. The amusement park was located at 9300 West 79th Street in present-day Justice, Illinois.

In popular culture

Archer Avenue was made famous by

Finley Peter Dunne Finley Peter Dunne (born Peter Dunne; July 10, 1867 – April 24, 1936) was an American humorist, journalist and writer from Chicago. In 1898 Dunne published ''Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War'', his first collection of the nationally syndicated M ...

in his books and sketches about the fictional saloonkeeper Mr. Dooley, whose tavern was on "Archey Road". The fictional Dooley "lived" in the real-life

Bridgeport, Chicago Bridgeport is one of the 77 community areas in Chicago, on the city's South Side (Chicago), South Side, bounded on the north by the Chicago River#South Branch, South Branch of the Chicago River, on the west by Ashland Avenue, on the south by P ...

neighborhood. Archer Avenue is also famous as the purported haunting place of Resurrection Mary, a

vanishing hitchhiker The vanishing hitchhiker (or variations such as the ghostly hitchhiker, disappearing hitchhiker, phantom hitchhiker) is an urban legend in which people travelling by vehicle, meet with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes ...

who is said to travel between the Willowbrook Ballroom and Resurrection Cemetery.Ursula Bielski, ''Chicago Haunts: Ghostlore of the Windy City'', 2nd ed., Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1997.

Major intersections

Notes

References

External links

* {{Streets in Chicago Archer Avenue Roads in Illinois Transportation in Joliet, Illinois Lockport, Illinois