Illinois Route 47

Illinois Route 47 (IL 47) is a 169.76 mi largely rural north–south state highway that runs from the Wisconsin state border at Highway 120 near Hebron, to IL 10, just south of Interstate 72 (I-72) near Seymour. IL 47 is in primarily rural areas but in several suburbs of Chicago, such as Woodstock and Huntley, traffic can be heavily congested.

IL 47 crosses most interstate highways in northern and central Illinois, but the largest towns that it serves are Woodstock (at US 14), Huntley (at I-90), Lily Lake at (IL 64), Elburn (at IL 38), Sugar Grove (at US 30), Yorkville (at US 34), Morris (at I-80), Dwight (at I-55), Forrest (at US 24), Gibson City (at IL 54), and Mahomet (at I-74).

Route description
Illinois 47 overlaps Illinois Route 72 and U.S. Route 20 at Pingree Grove, a village approximately 60 mi from Chicago; this concurrency is part of a so-called wrong-way concurrency, where one can be driving both “south” on Illinois 72 and “north” on U.S. 20 at the same time. Route 47 also shares concurrencies with Illinois Route 9 and Illinois 54 in Gibson City, U.S. Route 30 in Sugar Grove, U.S. Route 6 in Morris, Historic U.S. Route 66 in Dwight, and U.S. Route 150 in Mahomet.

History
The original route ended near where it ends today, however, in 1937, it was extended to Decatur via portions of modern day IL 10 and IL 105. Only eight years later (in 1945) was it shortened back to Monticello (the old route became IL 105). One final change came in 1980 when IL 47 was moved back to its current southern terminus at IL 10 after I-72 was built in the area.

Widenings started occurring further north as early as 2009. A project to reconstruct the road to 4 lanes from Kreutzer Road to Reed Road through Huntley was completed in October 2011, including completing all ramps at the I-90 interchange. IL 47 was widened from I-80 in Morris to Caton Farm Road south of Yorkville as part of the Prairie Parkway study–work was completed in 2015. In 2015, the project to expand the section between IL 71 and Kennedy Road in Yorkville to 4-lanes was completed. The partial interchange with I-88 between Sugar Grove and Elburn was made full with the completion of the missing ramps (using electronic toll collection) in 2019.

Future
The Illinois Department of Transportation is proposing to add lanes to several portions of Illinois Route 47, which eventually would make it a 4-lane road from I-80 in Morris to I-88 in Sugar Grove, and from I-90 in Huntley to north of Woodstock.