Until Route 6 was duplexed with I-74 through town in the 1970s, it always passed the intersection in the middle foreground of this 1950s aerial photo of Moline's downtown. At that intersection is the fifteen-story LeClaire Hotel, opened in 1924. After Route 6 was reoriented across the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge in the late 1930s, it passed by the front of the hotel on 19th Street. Before that, it took a perpendicular route on Fifth Avenue. The upper right of the photo shows numerous factories that made Moline famous as the "Farm Implement Capital of the World," most of which are gone today.

Before the reorientation of Route 6 through Bettendorf, the route shot through downtown Moline on Fifth Avenue. In the distance, seven blocks from the photographer, is the Le Claire Hotel. (March 1997 photo)

When Route 6 was reoriented through Moline in the late 1930s, this 1904 bridge Rock River Bridge was replaced with a new one. Both were high bridges, to accommodate traffic on the little-used Hennepin Canal that used the Rock River at this point and paralleled Route 6 from Moline to Mineral, Illinois. (1920s postcard)

The new, 1938, bridge over the Rock River at Moline had a distinctive Art Deco flavor in its design. The same bridge remains today, without the decorative touches. (1940’s photo)

Just south of the Rock River and north of the Moline (Now Quad City International) Airport was this motel. (1940s postcard)

After the new Rock River bridge was completed, Route 6 had a direct four-lane path south from downtown Moline to the airport. This photo, which faces to the southeast, was taken about the time 6 arrived in 1938. A number of airport improvements, including most of the the buildings shown here, were funded as Federal Depression-era projects. Route 6 duplexed with U.S. Route 150 to the intersection in the upper left of the photo. At that point, 150 continued to the south on the road shown here, and 6 turned to the east to begin its trek across the Prairie State.

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