The Bloomington Pantagraph has coverage of the first-ever Happy Wiener Festival in the Route 66 town of Atlanta, Ill., this weekend.

Ninety-year-old Paul Adams, a resident of the town, has made the same observation as I have about the town.

"There is a lot of energy in this small town," Adams said. "It's a great place to live, and it seems now that we have some young folks moving in we're getting everyone involved and starting new things, like the Happy Wiener Festival."

Here's a story from the Bloomington Pantagraph about the allure of Route 66. Here's a side story about the number of foreign tourists the road draws.

These two paragraphs jumped out at me:

More than 300,000 tourists drive Route 66 through Illinois each year, according to the Illinois Route 66 Heritage Project, based in Springfield. Precise figures on the economic impact are not available.

“It has an impact of millions of dollars,” said Patty Ambrose, executive director of the heritage project. “Route 66 is the No. 3 tourism draw in Illinois. Chicago is No. 1, and the (Abe) Lincoln sites are No. 2.”

I have doubts the number of travelers specifically traveling old Route 66 is that high. That averages to more than 800 people a day. During the height of tourism season in the early spring and summer, maybe. But not the whole year. Maybe the Heritage Project is also counting incidental traffic.

The city of Tulsa once cited a figure of 50,000 visitors a year on Route 66, which sounds a lot more realistic.

However, the "millions of dollars" of economic impact is easy to believe, because it doesn't take a lot of money per capita to hit the seven-figure mark. Just finding lodging for the night will be in the $40- to $80-a-night range. And folks who travel the old road love buying Route 66 souvenirs.

And after the "Cars" movie comes out, who knows? Maybe that 300,000 mark won't be so far-fetched after all.