U.S. Route 20 in Illinois
section of U.S. Highway in Illinois, United States
U.S. Route 20 (US 20) in the state of Illinois is located in the northern region of the state. Running northwest to southeast, the highway enters the state in East Dubuque after crossing the Mississippi River and exits in the East Side neighborhood of Chicago. Since 2022, the highway has been officially named the Illinois Medal of Honor Highway, though it is also signed as the General Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway (often abbreviated as the Grant Memorial Highway).
As it travels through Illinois, US 20 also connects with a wide number of north-south state highways. Its routing also has it join several US highways (including US 12, US 41, and US 45), and three Interstate highways (I-39, I-290, and I-294). It serves as a terminus point with both the shortest Illinois highway (Illinois 35) and its longest (Illinois 1).
Within Illinois, US 20 runs for a distance of 233.93 miles (376.47 km), its third-longest span east of the Mississippi River.
Route description
As it travels through Illinois, US 20 varies widely in its configuration. Prior to entering the Chicago suburbs, the majority of the route is a two-lane surface road connecting small rural towns and multiple north-south state highways. In Freeport, the route expands to a controlled-access freeway bypass supplementing a business route.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “U.S. Route 20 in Illinois” as section of U.S. Highway in Illinois, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as section of U.S. Highway in Illinois, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1073106. Authority coordinates are 42.220, -89.095. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2022.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “U.S. Route 20 in Illinois” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.