Interstate 475 (Michigan) - Memorial Highway Designations

Memorial Highway Designations

I-475 has carried two different memorial highway designations in its history, the Buick Freeway and the UAW Freeway.

David Dunbar Buick was a Scottish-born immigrant who moved to Detroit with his parents at the age of two in 1856–57. He quit school to supplement the family's income after his father's 1860 death. In the 1880s, he was a plumbing supplier in the Detroit area, inventing a process that created a cheaper white bathtub. Buick produced a method for permanently coating cast iron with vitreous enamel which allowed the production of "white" baths at lower cost. He later sold his plumbing business and the patents to American Standard. Using the profits from this sale, Buick started working on gasoline engines, and later automobiles. He eventually moved his operations from Detroit to the Flint Wagon Works. William Durant managed the fledgling Buick Manufacturing Company, making it the number one car-building company in the country by 1908. Durant later built on the foundation of Buick's company to create General Motors. In honor of Buick's contributions to Flint's manufacturing base, the Flint City Commission proposed naming I-475 after Buick. The freeway passed by the city's Buick plant and many of the employees would use the new freeway on their commutes to work. The Michigan Legislature passed Concurrent Resolution 22 in 1969 to add the name.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) was founded in Detroit on August 26, 1935. The labor union struggled to gain members until the Flint Sit-Down Strike in 1937. The strike started on December 30, 1936, when workers at the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 stopped loading tool dies on the night shift, locking themselves into the plant. The dies were destined for shipment to plants where union activity was much weaker than the UAW-organized plants in Flint. On January 3, 1937, workers at the plant sat down on the job; Fisher Plant No. 2 later joined in the sit-down strike. The heat was shut off at the plants, and on January 11, food deliveries were stopped, sparking a riot. Governor Frank Murphy mobilized 4,000 National Guard troops to keep peace at the plants. A second riot occurred at Chevrolet Plant No. 4 on February 1. The National Guard troops surrounded the 12 striking plants in Flint, but the governor never ordered them into action. President Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged the two parties to sit down once more, and an agreement was signed, recognizing the UAW in the 17 striking plants across the country.

A local politician wanted to honor not just the automotive pioneers in Flint, but the workers that worked in the plants. Since the UAW came to maturity in Flint as a result of the strikes, it was the appropriate location for a memorial highway designation. In 1980, the Michigan Legislature passed House Concurrent Resolution 583, renaming Flint's east–west freeway (I-69) the "Chevrolet–Buick Freeway" and I-475 the "UAW Freeway". I-475 was dedicated with its new name on Labor Day, 1981.

Public Act 142 of 2001 consolidated the memorial highway designations of the state. In passing this act, the Michigan Legislature expanded the Chevrolet–Buick Freeway to encompass all of I-69 in Genesee County. The act also restored Buick's name to I-475.