US-50 follows I-64 east from St. Louis across the flat prairie, whose fertile alluvial soil has earned it the nickname “Little Egypt.” The highway parallels the Illinois Central Railroad through a dozen small towns, the most significant of which is Lebanon (pop. 3,523), 20 miles east of the Mississippi River. An attractive town, with a number of stately, mansard-roofed, Victorian-era commercial buildings now housing antique shops along Main Street and St. Louis Street (US-50), Lebanon grew up around the bucolic campus of McKendree College, founded here in 1828, making it one of the oldest in Illinois.
The best reason to stop, however, is the small Mermaid House Hotel, on US-50 at 114 E. St. Louis Street. Charles Dickens, who visited the area to see the rich but muddy prairie east of town, stayed here for a night in 1842, and described it in American Notes as comparing “favorably with any village ale house of a homely kind in England.” After spending most of the past 150 years as a private home, the building is now undergoing restoration, but is open for tours (Sat. and Sun. 10 am–4 pm; donations).
