Golden Tours makes a stop at the Mill on Route 66 Museum
[August 21, 2026]
On Wednesday, August 19th, the Mill
on Route 66 Museum welcomed 49 guests who were participating in a Golden
Tours bus trip celebrating the 100th anniversary of Route 66. The tour
bus, out of Washington Illinois, left the Pekin area at 8 a.m. on their
way to the Little Theater in Sullivan. The only planned stop on the
route was the Mill. After a long visit, they then re-boarded the bus and
went to the Sullivan area, where they stopped for an authentic Amish
Mill before attending a Route 66 themed musical at the Little Theater.
On hand to greet the guests were Logan County Tourism Bureau director
Wanda Lee Rohlfs and volunteer Susan Harmon.
While waiting for the bus to arrive Wednesday morning, Rohlfs was asked
if the Mill was seeing an increase in visitors for the Route 66
anniversary year. She said she felt like there probably was an increase,
but it was hard to say how this year compares to last year, because the
LCTB was in transition last summer. She said the advertised visitor
center was downtown, and she had no way of knowing how many people went
there, found it closed and instead of coming to the Mill as requested,
had just moved on. She said she figured there were some.
On the other hand, she said she felt like the last few weeks in
particular the Mill has been busy. Harmon reported that in the last two
weeks, the Mill has received over 120 visitors. Of those about 75 were
domestic tourists. She said that guests had come from Illinois, Ohio,
and Indiana. Rohlfs said what was amazing to her was the number of
international visitors and where they were from. It was noted that the
largest number had come from Canada, Germany and Italy, with lesser
numbers from Argentina, Spain, France, and Poland.
Harmon offered narratives on the
different displays in the building and offered many details about the
Mill. She talked about the huge restoration project, pointing out photos
of the building in its state of ruin and current photos with its new
windows, siding, and fresh paint. Harmon explained that there were hours
of volunteer work that went into the structure including repairs to the
building overall, work on floors, electrical and much more.
When she moved on the displays that defined the color and character of
the Mill in its heyday, guests were quite entertained by the wiggling
foot handing down from the ceiling. And several got quite a kick out of
hearing about the screaming basket that was strategically placed in the
women’s bathroom when the Huffman family was running the Mill.
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She told the story of how the
basket had a foghorn sounding devise tucked inside and a bold
sign that said, “do not open.” She said often guests to the
restroom could not resist peeking inside, and when they did the
horn would sound loud enough that everyone in the diner area
heard it and would be waiting, watching, snickering, and
laughing when the guilty party tried to slink out of the
bathroom.
The visitors enjoyed checking out
the quirky items that are on display around the mill, reminiscing
about their favorite handout that had booths and tables similar to
what was on display. The gift shop was also popular and guests
looked through the wide variety of merchandise looking to find the
perfect souvenir to commemorate the trip.
As they boarded the bus to move on toward Sullivan, each guest was
given a light snack from the LCTB that included a windmill shaped
cookie.
LCTB
volunteer Susan Harmon shares stories about the Mill on Route 66
Museum in Lincoln, Illinois video
[Nila Smith]
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