Get your kicks on Route 66 in southwest Illinois this summer as communities along the Last 100 Miles of the historic highway mark the road’s 100th anniversary with festivals, concerts and themed products.

Editor’s note: This story is part of the Monitor’s summerlong series following old U.S. Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, California.

Just a few blocks from the Old Joliet Prison, Johnny Williams is standing outside a tire shop, waiting for a repair.

He’s a lifelong resident of the Joliet area, a father of six and grandfather of 10, and he remembers back in the day when the prison was part of the economic engine that made Joliet run.

“I remember when people used to sit out there visiting their people — on the buses, you know?” Mr. Williams says. “I have plenty of people whose parents and uncles worked there.” He gestures toward the 25-foot limestone walls, still topped with razor wire. “And as a child, I would always wonder — what’s behind that wall?”

So, he still marvels at how the once imposing former state penitentiary has been transformed over the past decade. Today, the people walking through its front gate are not prisoners or staff, but tourists and Americana-lovers there to have fun and celebrate the centennial of Route 66. The iconic roadway, noted in hundreds of anthems about America, passed right by the prison until 1940, when it was rerouted a few blocks away.

The prison once housed such infamous criminals as Richard Speck, James Earl Ray, and John Wayne Gacy. But since its closing in 2002, it has become a site for concerts, film viewings, and today, an event dubbed “The Big House Ballgame.”

Illinois is receiving $148.8 million from Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family as part of a nationwide $7.4 billion settlement agreement that took effect Friday, marking the state’s latest payout from companies that systematically addicted generations of Americans to opioids.

The money will be doled out over the next 15 years, mostly in the next three, under the deal reached last spring by a coalition of state attorneys general including Illinois’ Kwame Raoul.

“No amount of money will ever put right the devastating effects of Purdue’s and the Sacklers’ prioritization of profits over people’s lives and the welfare of our communities,” Raoul said in a statement. “I will continue to ensure settlement funding is distributed equitably throughout the state to help support programs that are trying to mitigate the opioid addiction crisis.”

A nationwide investigation of Purdue Pharma was launched in 2016 over the company’s role in fueling the opioid epidemic through the over-prescription of painkillers like Oxycontin, and the downplaying of risk for addiction.

Illinois sued Purdue and its owners in the Sackler family in 2019, when Purdue filed for bankruptcy.

The overarching settlement agreement, which permanently bars the Sacklers from selling opioids in the U.S., calls for the family to pay $1.5 billion and Purdue to pay $900 million in the first payment. They’ll also pay $500 million in a year, the same amount in two years and $500 million in three years.

Opioid settlements with other companies linked to the nationwide crisis have totaled more than $58 billion, with Illinois so far earmarked for $1.6 billion.

More than $531 million of that has already been paid out to the state from various distributors and pharmaceutical companies.

About 725,000 people died of opioid overdoses across the country from 1999-2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overdoses spiked in Cook County during the COVID-19 pandemic, to a staggering high of 2,001 deaths in 2022, with 91% of those cases tied to fentanyl. Fatal opioid overdoses have declined since then, with 1,822 deaths countywide in 2023, 1,169 in ‘24 and 687 last year, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Settlement funds are dedicated to addiction treatment, prevention and recovery programs. For more information on treatment for opioid addiction, visit helplineil.org or call 833-2FINDHELP.