Route 66 Midpoint, Adrian

Adrian was a Rock Island station picked out in 1900 and named for Adrian Cullen, an early farmer. The town really started in 1909, when the railroad was finished through Oldham County, and it grew slowly through drought, water shortages and the black dusters of the 1930s. Its first grain elevator went up in 1929. Route 66 and the wheat trade kept it going, and the town now claims the midpoint of the road. A replica of an old American Automobile Association sign says 1,139 miles to Chicago and 1,139 miles to Los Angeles.

Across the road is the Midpoint Cafe, which began as a one-room, dirt-floor brick cafe in 1928, run by Zella Crim and called Zella's. It was enlarged in 1947 and stayed open around the clock in the road's busy years. Dub Edmunds and Jesse Fincher ran it with a filling station as Jesse's Cafe from 1956 to 1976, when it was known for pie. Interstate 40 bypassed Adrian in 1969, and the cafe changed hands and names several more times.

Fran Houser bought it in 1990 and, on the advice of Tom Snyder of the U.S. Route 66 Association, renamed it the Midpoint Cafe in 1995. Pixar's researchers came through in 2001, and Flo of the film Cars is based on her. The cafe has changed owners since, so check that it is open before planning a meal around it. The sign is there every day.