Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the way. Eisenhower never forgot the ordeal, especially when compared to the expansive
and well-maintained autobahn network he saw in Germany during the Second World War.
In1956,aspresident,hesignedtheInterstateHighwaySystemintolaw,authorizing41,000
miles of super-highways with a combined land area
the size of the state of Delaware
and
using enough cement to build eighty Hoover Dams. It was the greatest peacetime public
works project in history.
And yet, unlike the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge, tourists don't line up every
day of the year to ooh and aah over the interstate system. In fact, we literally grind it un-
derfoot in our haste to arrive at, and photograph, far less impressive bits of roadside con-
struction (the Corn Palace; the world's largest rocking chair; Branson, Missouri). Roads
are like maps in that we think about them only when they
don't
do their job and we wind
up lost or stuck or sidelined. If not for roadgeeks, who would appreciate the lowly high-
way? Mark pauses for a moment in our route to point out the road construction connecting
Sprague Avenue to state highway 16; a new westbound viaduct is being built because the
unique design of the existing one—four-legged piers, each leg weighing almost four hun-
dred tons—means that it can't be widened. It's true: the tapered legs of the old viaduct are
quite distinctive, even beautiful. I don't think I've ever really
looked
at the supports of any
elevated highway, though I'm sure I've driven on thousands.
Maybe roadgeeks can find something to fascinate them on just about any highway in
America, but they also have their own special landmarks and pilgrimages. Some of these
oddities are so bizarre they'd be spotted even by amateurs like me. There's
the traffic light
in Syracuse's
Tipperary Hill where the green signal is on the
top
(a nod to the neighbor-
hood's Irish roots). Or 1010th Street west of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, believed to be
the
nation's highest-numbered road
.
Or the strange vortex that is
US-321 through Elizabeth-
ton
, Tennessee—it enters town signed as south-north but reverses the signage when it hits
US-19E: now the two directions are north-south, respectively. No matter which way you
leave town on US-321, you're headed south!
Breezewood, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated hamlet of only two hundred people, is
perhaps the most notorious destination. “Most people would say, 'What's in Breeze-
wood?'” Mark tells me. “But mention it to a roadgeek, and they'll shudder.” When I-70
was built through the area, funding disagreements with the Pennsylvania Turn-pike Com-
mission meant that no ramps could be built connecting the new freeway to the turnpike.
As a result, there's still a gap of less than a mile in the freeway there, and drivers on
I-70 are puzzled to see traffic signals suddenly appear
on the interstate
. Local gas stations
and fast-food franchises love the anomaly, of course, and have opposed any attempts to
build a real interchange. Roadgeeks now use the term “breezewood” to refer to any place
where stoplights unexpectedly interrupt highway traffic, and some darkly blame former
