New federal rules now require certain adults, veterans, and people without housing to work or volunteer 80 hours a month or face a three-month limit on food assistance, with the Greater Chicago Food Depository warning roughly 120,000 Illinois residents could be affected.

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.”