King of the Roads

I wasn’t intending to write a second one of these so soon. But one of my ideas, I couldn’t let it go.

I’m going to let you all in on a secret, something I don’t think I’ve ever really told anyone.

I wanted, when I grew up, to be in charge of assigning highway routes and numbers. Really. Yeah, I had other aspirations as well. But this was the big one.

I mean, good golly, deciding which road is a highway, and which number will be assigned to it? What could possibly be cooler than that? And what could possibly be more important than that?

See, I grew up obsessed with numbers, and the highway designations were the most visible manifestation of how numbers (in the form of U.S. highways and Interstate highways) organized the country, and in turn how they also organized the state (because every state has its own numbered highway system).

I took it a step farther though: I had this notion in my mind that highways had personalities. “Personality” might be a stretch, but to be honest, that notion still persists in my mind. There are things we can say about highways, about their relative importance, about where they go, even about what the highway numbers look like on signs. In particular, U.S. highway shields. Consider my two “home” highways:

U.S. 20 is an original route and holds the distinction of being the longest road in the United States. It essentially goes ocean to ocean, with termini in Boston and Newport, Oregon.

See how the “20” is serious and alert? Well, the highway itself represents the growth of the country, its movement west. And it takes seriousness and alertness to pursue the nation’s manifest destiny.

U.S. 51 is also an original route, almost connecting the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. It runs from Hurley, Wisconsin (just south of Lake Superior) to Laplace, Louisiana (west of New Orleans).

See how the “51” is friendly and steady? It must be both, because it’s one of the most prominent roads uniting north and south. It’s got to hold things together, without showing stress.

(As an aside, one night when I was a teenager we were watching 60 Minutes or some similar program, there was a piece about young math geniuses or something like that. One guy explained how numbers formed “shapes” in his mind. He could do intermediate multiplication in his head by taking two such “shapes”, somehow manipulating them, and a third “shape” appearing. I’m not remotely explaining this well, but that was the night I realized that other people could “see things” in numbers too. I’d really like to see that piece again and I wonder if anybody remembers this, from some 25 years ago.)

To me, U.S. 51 in particular retains an outsized importance, because it connects Rockford (where I grew up) with Bloomington (where I went to college) with Centralia (where my grandparents came from). It runs from the very top of Illinois at South Beloit to the very bottom of Illinois at Cairo. It is Illinois, to me.

U.S. 20 and U.S. 51 are today co-signed (along with Interstate 39) for a couple of miles around the southeast edge of Rockford. But when I was very young, U.S. 51 ran right through the heart of Rockford, coming up 11th Street from the south, jogging on Harrison Avenue west to Kishwaukee Street, then Kishwaukee north to that jumbled area where it would wind up being North Second Street, all the way through Loves Park and Machesney Park and on north up to the Wisconsin line.

My grandparents’ laundromat was on U.S. 51. Their house was a block off. My other grandmother was two blocks off of U.S. 51. I was just a couple blocks more. My school was just a couple blocks the other side of it. Wherever I was, there - right there - was a United States Highway, which could take me anywhere, from McDonald’s to Wausau.

And then one day, they re-routed U.S. 51. It was moved to be co-signed with Interstate 90 up into Wisconsin. The route through the middle of Rockford was renumbered as Illinois 251.

I don’t remember any particular angst over the change. Rather, I think what I remember is wonderment that anyone could, or would, change a number like that. Such a thing was not to be done lightly!

Now, thanks to one of my all-time favorite websites, I’m well aware that things like that happen all the time. The Illinois Highways Page is the work of one guy, Rich Carlson, who saw fit many years ago to compile a list of every state and federal highway that have ever existed in Illinois, along with a description of not only where they go, but also where they went.

Much of the 20th century history of Illinois can be told in terms of its highways. What were the very first state highways? Well, naturally, they were Illinois 1, 2, 3, and 4; and those routes are still very similar to what they originally were. Illinois 5 and 6 though? Very different. Some state highways were re-signed as federal highways back in the 1920s and 1930s. And some just got drastically moved around for other reasons. Voila: here’s a synthesis of the field I actually studied in school (U.S. history) and highway numbering.

Numbers were an obsession; art was not. Many, many years later, though, I found that while art wasn’t my thing, design greatly appealed to me. It may sound absurd, but I’d just never really understood that word. It took discovering 99% Invisible a couple of years ago for this to really click. Highway designation? That’s design. Highway signage? That’s also design. Voila: here’s a synthesis of my obsession with numbers and a quasi-field I never really understood.

And yes, there’s so much more to be said about signage itself. Consider the difference between these two signs:

What does this convey? It conveys: Hello, you are in Illinois. Plain, square, vanilla Illinois. (Just like plain, square, vanilla Indiana, as it so happens.)

But oh, what’s this? What is this shield conveying? It’s conveying: Hey, this is Wisconsin, brother. Let’s go somewhere.

I remember trips in the mid to late ‘80s where I would keep journals in spiral notebooks. The main feature of the notebooks, I think, were my drawing the highway shields representing what highways we’d gone down. I especially remember drawing those Wisconsin state highway shields.

Wisconsin, it should be noted, also added a wrinkle to all of this:

Illinois has county highways too, which use those ubiquitous blue pentagon shields that several other states also use. But in Wisconsin, county highways were a bigger deal. They had their own interstate exits. And they had letters instead of numbers. And sometimes double letters. It was mind-blowing.

Wisconsin was awesome.

(I have thoughts about highway signs from other states too. Colorado, yes. Maine, are you for real? And so on.)

Anyway.

I’m older now. Some of these obsessions aren’t what they used to be. But I live in an interesting place. Three blocks to the north is U.S. 34. Less than a mile to the west are co-signed U.S. 12, 20, and 45. And just a little bit to the south is the Mother Road itself, U.S. 66 (albeit only “historic U.S. 66”). Between those 5 federal highways, think of all the places in the country I could get to. Detroit. Mobile. Boston. Los Angeles. I still think in these terms sometimes. And I find the U.S. highways more romantic than the Interstates. I don’t see that changing.

Sometimes I try to get my son interested in the highway signs. I’ll say, “Look at that sign! We’re on Route 171.” He… may… not… be… very… interested. But… maybe… he… is…? Yes… maybe… he… too… can… be… Map… Boy…

Ahh, Map Boy, one of many nicknames I managed to acquire over time. I haven’t even actually mentioned maps up to this point, have I? I think my favorite book growing up was the Rand McNally Road Atlas. I mean, you’re not surprised at this point, are you?

It’s just like D. Boon said. I must look like a dork.

But it also provides a thread to all of these other things I’ve found over time. One of my research interests, if I can ever get back to it, is how Interstate highways have been instrumental in killing local commerce and in the process damaging small town America. I’ve been fascinated with design forever without necessarily realizing it, so that only in recent years have I come to understand how my thoughts about design, highways, and numbers converge. And even if highway signage isn’t exactly the medium, I’m finding that talking about things in terms of numbers is a very powerful way to interact with a kindergartner, which is kind of a big thing for me to be doing these days.

It doesn’t look like I’m destined to be in charge of highway numbering though, and that’s too bad. I mean, I’m sure they could use my insight on Illinois 336.

Hey IDOT! I’m a man of relevant credentials by no means. I can still help though. You know where to find me. I’ll be waiting for your call.