CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (Chambana Today) — A holiday tradition that has lit up Champaign County for more than 60 years is dimming its lights.

Candlestick Lane — a Christmas staple in Urbana’s Grant Place neighborhood since the early 1960s — will no longer hold its official lighting ceremony. While some residents plan to decorate their homes, the once-spectacular display that drew lines of cars and generations of visitors has officially come to an end.

The holiday display began 61 years ago when Illinois Power sponsored a contest for the best-decorated street. The residents of Grant Place and the surrounding blocks off Philo Road won — and even after the contest ended, the neighbors kept the lights glowing year after year.

At its peak, traffic stretched for blocks as families waited to drive through the neighborhood’s colorful displays.