As written in another post, the business organizations in the towns of Illinois were always anxious to draw attention to their towns in the hopes of greater commercial opportunities and an expanded customer base. One way that they drew attention to their towns, or made sure that their towns were not forgotten, was to place them on a map!!!
The June 1, 1916 Pantagraph featured a road sign that was going to place Bloomington on the map without costing Bloomington business men a dime! The business men of Pontiac had developed their own sign which showed motorists the route between Chicago and St. Louis, showing Pontiac and Bloomington on this route. As mentioned in a previous post, the roads at this time were not marked for directing traffic from town to town, because there was no organized road system. Each town or county made its own arrangements for the roads within its boundaries. The men of McLean County were required to spend a specified amount of time building the county roads from the earliest days of the county. People traveling by wagon or buggy knew the roads of their own locale and could find their way and no signs were erected to direct traffic. But with the use of automobiles for transportation, people were traveling much farther from home. On unfamiliar roads, traveling at unprecedented speeds, it must have been all too easy to lose one's way to one's destination.
This handsome sign was designed by the Pontiac businessmen to suggest a route. The business association would pay one half the cost of erecting the signs along the route and the State of Illinois would pay the other half.