Funks Grove Pure Maple Sirup

The Funk family settled at the grove in the 1820s, drawn to one of the rare stands of native timber on the vast Illinois prairie. They began tapping the maples and making sirup in the mid-1800s, and the operation has passed down through the generations of the family ever since, one of the longest-running maple sirup businesses in the country.

The land was long the homeland of Native nations of central Illinois, including the peoples of the Illinois Confederacy, whose descendants today are enrolled in the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo. The grove that drew the Funks had drawn people for generations before them, a green island of forest in a sea of tallgrass prairie.

The family famously spells their product sirup, with an i rather than the more common syrup with a y. It is not a gimmick but an older, valid spelling that the Funks have kept as a mark of tradition, and it has become a beloved quirk that road-trippers remember and repeat.

The sirup itself is pure and seasonal, made from the sap of the grove's own maples, gathered and boiled down each late winter and early spring when the sap runs. Because it is made in limited quantity from a single grove, it often sells out, and securing a bottle is part of the pleasure of the visit.

Funks Grove is more than a farm, it is one of the last remnants of the native forest that once grew in scattered groves across the Illinois prairie. Most such woodland was cleared for farming long ago, which makes the surviving grove a rare and precious ecosystem, protected in part as a nature preserve.

The Funks Grove Nature Preserve offers quiet trails through the old hardwoods, a chance to walk among the very maples that give the sirup its flavor and to see the kind of forest the first settlers found. In spring the woodland floor blooms with wildflowers, and birdsong fills the canopy, a peaceful counterpoint to the roadside stand.

Funks Grove lies directly on old Route 66 south of Bloomington-Normal, which is a large part of why it became a legend. Generations of travelers on the Mother Road have pulled off to buy a bottle of sirup and stretch their legs in the grove, and the farm has become one of the highway's most beloved landmarks in Illinois.

For anyone tracing Route 66 across the state, Funks Grove is an essential and authentic stop, a place where the road, a rare surviving forest, and a family tradition more than a century and a half old all come together in one sweet, unhurried pause.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.