History
In 1701, the first transportation routes through what became the state of Michigan were the lakes, rivers and Indian trails. One of these Indian trails, the Saginaw Trail followed a path from the Detroit area north to Saginaw; this trail ran along what is now Dixie Highway from Pontiac northwards.
Telegraph lines were first installed from the Detroit area south to the Monroe area in the mid-19th century with additional lines north to Pontiac completed around 1868. As these communication lines were installed, roadways were added as needed to proved access for maintenance. The parallel road from Dearborn south was named for these lines, becoming Telegraph Road. When the state initially signposted its state highways in 1919, Telegraph Road from the Ohio state line north to Dearborn was assigned the original M-10 designation. The same year, the Dixie Highway, an auto trail that ran south from Detroit to Miami, Florida, was extended through Pontiac northward to the Straits of Mackinac. The numerical highway designation was changed to US 24 when the United States Numbered Highway System was inaugurated on November 11, 1926.
Highway traffic coming north from Toledo was forced to pass through Detroit to get to points north at the time. To ease the congestion downtown, a westerly bypass was constructed in the 1920s. Between Flat Rock and Dearborn, the upgraded highway was opened in 1922, with an extension to Stoney Creek the following year. The new road was built north from Michigan Avenue to Grand River Avenue in 1924. The extension to the state line was finished in 1925, and the remainder to Dixie Highway north of Pontiac was done in 1930. At the time, US 24 was extended north to the corner of Telegraph and Square Lake roads, with M-58 routed along the western Pontiac bypass. The highway was widened into a multi-lane highway starting in 1936.
By 1945, a divided highway designated Alternate US 24 (ALT US 24) was opened from the state line north to Erie. This divided highway, now named the Detroit–Toledo Expressway, was extended in 1956 to Gibraltar, and the ALT US 24 designation was continued north to connect back to the mainline near Woodhaven. The former connection near Erie becomes a connector route, now part of CONN US 24 and CONN M-125. Additional segments of freeway are opened through 1958, and the I-75 designation is applied to the freeway the following year.
In the 1960s, officials with the Michigan State Highway Department, predecessor to MDOT, added median crossovers along Telegraph Road. These additions were used to eliminate left turns at intersections and shift traffic less than 350 feet (110 m) away from the intersection. The distance complicated traffic flow. Later this concept was refined and used at the intersection of 8 Mile Road and Livernois Avenue, becoming the first Michigan left intersection in the state.
In 1970, US 10 was moved from its previous routing along Woodward Avenue between Detroit and Pontiac to follow the Lodge Freeway. From the northern end of the Lodge to Square Lake Road near Pontiac, US 10 and US 24 were run concurrently along Telegraph Road. North of Square Lake Road, US 10 continued along Telegraph back to Dixie Highway as before. In 1986, US 10 was truncated to end at Bay City instead of continuing on to Detroit. In the process, Telegraph Road lost its US 10 co-designation, US 24 was extended to its current northern terminus near Clarkston and the previously existing BUS US 10 in Pontiac was redesignated to become a BUS US 24 instead.
On November 30, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the 2006 appropriations bill related to the US Department of Transportation and other agencies. Contained in that law was a provision that named a 30-mile (48 km) stretch of US 24 from I-96 to its northern end at I-75 the "Max M. Fisher Memorial Highway"; the highway was dedicated in May 2008. In June 2012, Governor Rick Snyder signed a bill from the Michigan Legislature that designated a section of Telegraph Road in Taylor for Cpl. Matthew Edwards, a member of the Taylor Police Department that was killed in the line of duty.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Route 24 In Michigan
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)