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    Grand River Avenue
    Grand River Avenue
    Grand River Avenue
    Ebook196 pages2 hours

    Grand River Avenue

    By Jon Milan and Gail Offen

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    About this ebook

    Grand River Avenue, or Michigan US-16 as it was ultimately designated, is one of Michigan’s true “Blue Highways”—an original two-lane, blacktop road still serving as a direct path through roadside America. Originally a Native American trail, this ancient path has been a westbound route from the Straits of Detroit to the eastern shores of Lake Michigan for more than 1,000 years. Over time, it has served as a footpath, horse trail, wagon rut, stagecoach route, plank road, and ultimately a two-lane highway that gave some of America’s earliest motorists their first taste of long-distance automobile travel.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 3, 2014
    ISBN9781439648148
    Grand River Avenue
    Author

    Jon Milan

    Gail Offen is an adjunct professor at Lawrence Technological University and an award-winning advertising creative director, writer and branding specialist. She's a frequent speaker on Michigan subjects and coauthor with Jon Milan of Grand River Avenue: From Detroit to Lake Michigan , Michigan Haunts: Public Places and Eerie Spaces and more. Jon Milan is a well-known lecturer, journalist and photographer specializing in topics related to Michigan social history, travel and music. He has five books to his credit, including Detroit: Ragtime and the Jazz Age and Old Chicago Road , as well as three titles coauthored with Gail Offen.

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      Book preview

      Grand River Avenue - Jon Milan

      collection.

      INTRODUCTION

      I frequently stare at a magnet on my refrigerator. It is a quote from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography: To travel is to live.

      My father gave me that magnet, and, to twist it a bit, he lived to travel. Many of my favorite memories with my parents have a famous backdrop—the Gateway Arch, the Grand Canyon, the Unisphere, Wall Drugs, Mount Rushmore, Disneyland, the Soo Locks—with my brother, my mother, and me posed stiffly or waving at my father and rendered in saturated Ektachrome slides and Super 8 film.

      My father was born in Poland and came to this country in 1951. America’s highways were busy again after the war, and he was amazed that almost everyone seemed to have a car. Before too long, he had one, too, and began his lifelong love of driving—anywhere. He would be happy to drive to California, and he was also happy to drive me around the corner. We had a ritual called F’ride—a five-year-old’s way of saying take me for a ride.

      Summers were when we saw most of America. We could take the time to see things at the proper pace. My brother and I would each sit on our side of an imaginary but uncrossable line in the backseat of a seafoam blue 1969 Catalina. My dad would smoke his pipe and whistle. My mom put on her head scarf when the convertible top came down. I remember complaining sometimes about having to see another dumb monument or some stupid museum. But I look back now and I am so thrilled and grateful to have been dragged to 46 of the 48 contiguous United States. (Someday, I will get to Idaho and Montana, Dad. I promise.)

      This book is dedicated to all the dads and moms who are smart enough to sense their children will be grateful someday—but mostly to my dad, who overcame many physical barriers and traveled the world. He passed along the love of seeing the unusual along with the usual, the irresistible lure of a souvenir sign, curiosity about how things are made, back roads, boxes of fudge, a clean windshield, tourist traps, fishing piers, mom-and-pop motels, town squares, and funky signs. Oh, and, although he loved maps (and could actually refold them), he did not mind asking for directions. That’s how you meet the locals, he would say.

      Writing this book gave us a chance to take a closer look at one such road: Grand River Avenue, or—perhaps a bit less flamboyantly—US 16. It is one of the more historically significant pathways running through our own home state of Michigan. Taking to the road with the intention of exploring it in its entirety (nearly 200 miles) and attempting to better understand its overall significance has rivaled many of the long-distance treks of my youth. At times, it has even re-conjured memories of those long-past adventures, riding in the backseat, being safely transported across the country by mom and dad.

      As to the Grand part of Grand River, when your name comes with bragging rights (Okay, what makes Grand River so darn grand?), you better have lots of stories to tell. And, while many of the books in this series are about places and things, we thought it would be interesting to write about a road that is also a trail, a highway, and the state’s longest river. Basically, it is the utility infielder of how to get somewhere across Michigan. You can even go on its car ferry extension to Milwaukee.

      Running between the heart of Detroit and the edge of Lake Michigan, Grand River is a great choice for seeing urban, suburban, and rural Michigan. For four decades, it served as the primary connection between the state’s largest cities. But it all started as a migratory route for its earliest inhabitants—the Sauk, Huron, and Potawatomi tribes.

      Along with many other firsts, the first roadside picnic tables in Michigan were set along Grand River in 1929, near Saranac. These were the brainchild of Ionia County engineer Allan M. Williams, who also developed the Mitten State’s first official road map. The Grand River was also the source for the first electrically powered lighting system in America, in Grand Rapids in 1880.

      So drive, bike, walk the road, or even canoe all 225 miles of the river, as a Great Lakes Expedition team did in 2010, from Jackson County to Grand Haven. We have learned along the way that la rivière Grande is pretty darn grand.

      There are still many places and things to discover on nearby highways and two-lane, blacktop roads closer to home—some perhaps even running right past your backyard.

      And so, the magnet. Good advice, Hans.

      I plan to keep on the move, Dad. I just wish you were at the wheel.

      —Gail Offen, 2014

      One

      THE RIVER, THE TRAIL,

      AND US HIGHWAY 16

      THREE OF A KIND. In Michigan, there are three significant entities going by the name of Grand River—a river, an ancient trail, and US Highway 16. As indicated by the cover of this 1926 Rand McNally Official Auto Road Map of Michigan, the histories of these three entities are inextricably linked, weaving together a narrative that combines natural waterways, Native American trails, and the many social and geographic changes brought about by the auto industry.

      THE RIVER. Stretching more than 250 miles, the Grand River is Michigan’s longest, rising near Somerset, in Hillsdale County, just south of Jackson, and meandering up through Lansing and westward through Grand Rapids until it reaches Lake Michigan at Grand Haven. Over time, Native Americans, western explorers, and early settlers all used it for transportation and commerce. In the 1912 winter scene above, ships ply the last stretches of the Grand River before reaching the open waters of Lake Michigan. In time, the river and the highway that bears its name (US 16) would end up crossing paths in several places as they make their separate ways

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