U.S. Route 12 in Michigan - History

History

Old US 12 in Michigan runs from downtown Detroit to Chicago. It was replaced by Interstate 94 in 1962, and the state of Michigan re-routed the U.S. 12 designation to the former route of U.S. Highway 112.

What is now US 12 was originally Chicago Road, which ran from Detroit, Michigan, to Chicago, Illinois. It follows the general route of the old Sauk Trail, an important Native American trail. In 1680, the explorer Robert La Salle was probably the first European to travel along it.

The disasters suffered in the War of 1812 taught the Government that it could not defend the western country without roads over which to move its armies and their supplies. In 1824, the United States Congress appropriated money for the survey of roads of national importance in the General Survey Act, and the U.S. President allocated one third of the entire sum to surveying a military highway connecting Detroit with Fort Dearborn at Chicago. From about 1830 on, an ever-increasing flood of settlers poured into the Old Northwest and thousands of them traveled the new highway leading to Chicago, which has ever since been called the Chicago Road. In 1833, the Detroit Arsenal was constructed near the eastern end of the road and its water connection to the East Coast. By 1835, daily stagecoaches ran between Detroit and Chicago.

Construction of the Chicago Road began on the eastern end of the Sauk Trail, and the road did not reach the Michigan-Indiana border until 1835.

It was an old highway that ran through the middle of the major towns and cities of Michigan between Detroit and Chicago. In most cases the road is still there, and is named either Michigan Avenue, Old US 12 or the Red Arrow Highway, named after the 32nd Infantry Division. It is still possible to drive the highway from downtown Detroit all the way to The Magnificent Mile in Chicago, with only a few places in which one is required to navigate around the Interstate Highway. The major break in Old US 12 is in the middle of Michigan in Parma Township . It is at this point that I-94 cuts south to some degree and bisects the old highway, forcing a motorist to navigate north on smaller roads. Some bypassed portions of the roadway have (although faded) dashed white lines, predating the 1971 Michigan Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

Prior to 1956, the Detroit-Ann Arbor segment of US 12 was routed directly through Ann Arbor, through Plymouth Township, Livonia, and Redford Township, into Detroit, along the Plymouth-Ann Arbor Road corridor to Plymouth Road's eastern terminus at US 16, Grand River Avenue. US 12 continued on Grand River Avenue, co-signed with US 16, into downtown Detroit. Except for the co-signed Grand River Avenue segment, this route was designated as M-14 when US 12 was rerouted to the Detroit Industrial and Willow Run Expressways, most of which became I-94 in 1962.