History
A freeway along the I-296/US 131 corridor was proposed in the 1950s. The 1955 "Yellow Book", an early proposal for what would become the Interstate Highway System, contained an inset of the proposed freeways in and around the Grand Rapids area including a north–south freeway near the downtown area. Designated as part of the Interstate Highway System in 1957, I-296 construction was funded by the federal government.
The US 131 freeway was opened at 10 a.m. on December 17, 1962 between Pearl Street and the then-I-196/US 16 freeway north of downtown. This freeway section encompassed all of I-296 which would connect I-196 north of town with I-96 downtown. (The I-96 and I-196 designations were later flipped west of Grand Rapids.) M-37 was relocated in Grand Rapids to utilize I-96 around the northeast side of town instead of I-296/US 131 in 1969. The last state map to show the I-296 designation was published in 1979, as the 1980 map lacks any reference to the designation. Other maps, like the one published by the Kent County Road Commission, occasionally show I-296.
Read more about this topic: Interstate 296
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)