pontiacill.htm

If someone would say to me, "tell me why do you think your town is special"...I would respond by asking if they had several hours so I could tell them about Pontiac, Illinois.....
'MY TOWN'.....

I am an "import" to this beautiful, historic, little town....located on the "Mother Road", Route #66...This historic, nostalgic piece of concrete holds more memories than one could ever remember..

I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, many years ago, and have lived in Atlanta, Georgia and several other towns in Illinois, but Pontiac, Illinois is "home" to me and was to my late husband. It is a place where people say "hi", "good morning" and you and they may not even know each other...Sometimes just a "smile" says it all..

It is a place where one can sit on their front porch, late into the evening, watch older couples walk down the lighted streets, holding hands and not looking over their shoulders.....This is Pontiac, Illinois

Besides being geographically located between Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, our town has so much to offer to residents and more, to visitor's.

We can boast to having the Route #66 Hall of Fame & Museum which formally was located in McLean Illinois....This wonderful museum is located in the old firehouse which is on the National Register and houses years of memories and members of the Hall of Fame....In this same historical building is the Livingston County War Museum which covers the period of WW I to the present conflict. It is a "hands on museum" and visitors can try on helmets and pick up artifacts and try to imagine a human being gave his or her life so they can do just what they are doing......There are over thirty-thousand visitors, both national and international who have walked through the doors of our museums in the past three years since opening....what other town of a population of 12,500 can boast of this???? Both museums are manned by volunteers.....the war museum by all veterans from all wars.

Volunteers raised over $85,000 to erect a life size statue of Abraham Lincoln in the center of our downtown historic square. He had tried many cases in our little town and our residents wanted to give him a meaningful past, present and future...we succeeded in so doing.

We have unique shops---and we are a "Illinois Main street Program"...We have summer stock theater and many beautiful parks.....and we are the only Midwest town who has "three swinging bridges" over our Vermilion River.....

We also literally and actually put out "the red carpet" for our visitors. We roll out the red carpet and that is the type of treatment we give those who come to Pontiac, Illinois.
No wonder "Time Magazine" chose Pontiac as "One of the Best Small Towns in Illinois" with population under 25,000 people in which to live and visit!!!!!

For our younger visitors we have all the "fast-food" vendors and for our "baby-boomers" full menus, ethnic foods and a brand new Italian full menu restaurant.....We will supply bread for our senior citizens as they sit on our park benches and feed our ducks and geese.
To get to all the sites of which we boast, we take visitors on our "Jolly Trolley"....at no cost....just a smile and good time is all we ask of you.....

But there is more----living and visiting in Pontiac, Illinois is an 'EXPERIENCE'' It is an experience you will take home with you, think about and know that you were special and important to us....we give our visitors a special, lapel pin with out swinging bridge on it, but more important, we give you a hug and a wink which says, "we'll roll out the red carpet when you return".....

This is why I think my town of Pontiac, Illinois is the "best there is'....

Betty Estes

Pontiac, Illinois