Roads, more than rail lines or the airways, are at the heart of travel. I am going to devote a few posts to historic roads, what we can learn from them and why we should save them. This is the sixth post in an eight-part series.
In our last post we swung the spotlight over to Detroit’s Woodward Avenue (M-1), Michigan’s All-American Road. For the traveler, there is much to see and do along M-1, and we listed a few of the highlights from the road’s colorful past in our last installment.
It’s worth noting that Woodward Avenue (named for Augustus B. Woodward, the first Chief Justice of the Michigan Territory) was intended to be the most important of several major thoroughfares, among them Michigan, Grand River, Gratiot and Jefferson.
Some of city’s most memorable cultural icons line Woodward Avenue: The Fox Theatre, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Wayne State, Comerica Park, Ford Field and the Detroit Zoo.
Every summer, owners of classic cars by the thousands turn out for the Woodward Dream Cruise, an event to celebrate Detroit’s (and Woodward’s) automotive heritage. The gathering is a colorful reminder of the “cruising” decades of the 50s and 60s when drivers regularly “cruised the gut” up and down Woodward.
Although most of them have less notoriety that Detroit’s Woodward, many other historic roads spread out across the Midwest. Most carry designations as either National Scenic Byways (NSB) or All-American Roads (AAR) under the provisions of the American Byways® program.
Of course, I don’t suggest you drive hundreds to miles just to travel a section of historic road. But I operate on the premise that the more you know, the richer your travels can be.
So while I many not travel hours to drive on a length of historic road, I would certainly revise my route to take in such a road if I were close. If you are of the same mind, here’s a partial list to get you thinking.
In 1965, my family traveled to Oregon to visit my Uncle. We traveled through South Dakota’s Badlands, made an obligatory rest stop at Wall Drug Store in Wall, SD, and, of course, we drove the Needles Highway.
Someone later told Dad that the route was blacklisted by AAA. We never figured out it if was true, but for flatlanders from central Michigan, it made a good story.
Just a few years ago, I retraced at least the SD portion of that trip with my own family. Although it didn’t seem nearly as scary as it did decades earlier, it’s still a road to remember, and I tell my own stories about it. Like the fish in stories told again and again, the years enlarge the details of travel tales.
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