Gemini Giant - Route 66, Illinois
Seen along historic Route 66 in Illinois. The Gemini Giant is a landmark statue at the eastern entrance to Wilmington, Will County, Illinois. Standing outside the Launching Pad drive-in restaurant, the 30 foot tall statue is one of many giant Muffler Man advertising props found throughout the U.S. in the Sixties. The Gemini Giant is named after the Gemini space program and holds a silver rocket ship in his hands, while sporting an astronaut's space helmet that resembles a welding mask. The proprietors of a Dari-Delight restaurant (opened in 1960), John and Bernice Korelc, bought a 438-pound fiberglass Muffler Man figure for $3,500 at the annual National Restaurant Association convention, had it outfitted as an astronaut with helmet and rocket, and renamed the restaurant, now guarded by the Gemini Giant, as the Launching Pad. Since then, the Giant has been the most prominent decoration of the restaurant. Both the Launching Pad and the Gemini Giant were inducted into the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame in 2000.
U.S. Route 66 in Illinois connected St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois. The historic Route 66, first known as the Main Street of America and later dubbed the Mother Road by novelist John Steinbeck in 1939, took long distance automobile travelers from Chicago to Southern California. Illinois was the first of the eight states through which the route ran to have its segment of US 66 completed at a time when much of Route 66 was still a gravel-and-dirt road. Route 66 in Illinois has now been largely replaced with Interstate 55. Parts of the original route still carry traffic and six separate portions of the roadbed have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. —Wikipedia—This image was processed as an HDR (High Dynamic Range) composition.