Trains were essential to the development of the town, but traffic was never heavy; in 1887, only one southbound and one northbound freight stopped at Towanda. Passenger service stopped altogether in the 1940s. Most travel had long since been replaced by automobile and truck traffic along the roads that paralleled the Chicago and Alton rail line: State Bond Route 4 during the 1910s, U.S. Route 66 from 1926 through the early 1970s, and Interstate 55 from the 1970s onward. In 1955, U.S. Route 66 was locally widened to four lanes, as a partially divided highway with a grass median between the northbound and southbound lanes along much of its stretch. The former southbound lanes of Route 66 are now long disused, whereas the northbound roadbed is still in use as a two-lane local highway and the current path of Historic U.S. Route 66 in Illinois, now known as the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway, a designated National Scenic Byway.