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. This section was previously part of the older John Anderson Highway .]] The Dixie Highway was a United States Automobile Highway first planned in 1914 , to connect the US Midwest with the US South . It was part of the National Auto Trail system, and grew out of an earlier Miami to Montreal highway. The final result is better understood as a small network of interconnected paved roads, rather than a single highway. It was constructed and expanded from 1915 to 1927 . The Dixie highway was inspired by the example of the slightly earlier Lincoln Highway . The prime booster of the idea was promoter and businessman Carl G. Fisher . It was overseen by the Dixie Highway Association, and funded by a group of individuals, businesses, local, and state governments. In the early years the US Federal Government played little role, but from the early 1920s on it provided increasing funding, until 1927 when the Dixie Highway Association was disbanded and the highway was taken over as part of United States Highway system, with some portions becoming state roads. The route of the Dixie Highway was marked by a red stripe with the letters "DH" on it, usually with a white stripe above and below. This was commonly painted on Telephone and Telegraph poles along the route. Some locally built roads had the 'Dixie' name added, even though they may not have been part of the official highway; for example, the Cheney Highway east from Orlando, Florida became the Cheney Dixie Highway.Orange County Board of County Commissioners, meeting minutes, March 3 , 1926 and April 30 , 1928 ROUTES , the east mainline of the Dixie Highway, at the Brevard / Volusia county line, and was probably originally located about a mile to the east on the old road.]] ; this is now Orange Avenue.]] The Dixie Highway had two main routes, both starting in Miami, Florida in the south. The eastern route parallelled the Atlantic Ocean north to Savannah, Georgia , then went inland through Augusta, Georgia , Greenville, South Carolina and Knoxville, Tennessee , north through Lexington, Kentucky , Toledo, Ohio , Detroit, Michigan , and on to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan , with an extension into Ontario, Canada . The western route went inland through Orlando and Tallahassee, Florida , north through Atlanta, Georgia , Chattanooga, Tennessee , and Indianapolis, Indiana to Chicago, Illinois . The Dixie Highway also included a number of roads connecting the two branches, and numerous spurs. By 1925 the Dixie Highway system had 5,786 miles of paved roads. In places it incorporated older local and county paved roads. In rural areas, the paved portion was often just a single lane; when two vehicles needed to pass each other, one or both needed to pull partway onto the road's shoulder. Much of the southern portion of the highway was paved with Brick from Alabama . Florida .]] ) on the west side of Lake Lily in Maitland, Florida . It was built in 1915 or 1916 , paved over at some point, and restored in 1999 .]] The following State Road numbers were assigned to the Dixie Highway in 1923 ; for information about old alignments, see those pages: West Mainline
East Mainline
South Florida Connector
Central Florida Connector East Florida Connector
North Florida Connector
South Georgia Connector
Tampa-St. Petersburg Loop
THE DIXIE HIGHWAY AFTER THE U.S. HIGHWAY SYSTEM The eastern route Dixie Highway mostly became U.S. Highway 25 . In the late 20th Century , the route was largely paralleled and in some sections replaced by Interstate 75 , which starts in Miami, Florida and ends in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan . A large portion of the former U.S. 25 in western Ohio ultimately ended up in 1963(after Interstate 75's local completion) as a county highway still affectionately referred by local residents as "25-A" in Miami,Shelby,Auglaize and Allen counties. Dayton and Montgomery County residents call it "Dixie Drive" and is called "Cin-Day Rd." in Cincinnati's northern suberbs.A four lane portion runs through Bowling Green between Cygnet and Toledo as State Route Expressway 25 and in Michigan as "M 25" running through Detroit and ending in Bay City. The eastern portion from Jacksonville, Florida south was largely replaced with U.S. Route 1 . The portion of the western route from Nashville, Tennessee north to Louisville, Kentucky is now U.S. Highway 31W . In most of the cities it traverses in Kentucky, it is still referred to as "Dixie Highway" or "Dixie Avenue." The western route generally follows the present-day route of U.S. Highway 31 from Louisville to Indianapolis. From Nashville to Indianapolis, the route parallels Interstate 65 . The name "Dixie Highway" persists in various locations along its route where the main flow of long-distance traffic has been rerouted to more modern highways and the old Dixie Highway remains as a local road. In some South Florida cities, Dixie Highway (or sometimes Old Dixie Highway) parallels "Federal Highway" ( U.S. Route 1 ), sometimes just a block away. In some of these cities and towns, Dixie Highway is the north-south axis of the street numbering system, although its diagonal route (not quite straight north-south) makes it not quite the best choice for this use; furthermore, the extension of development westward means that the northwest and southwest quadrants of the grid defined in this manner are generally much larger than the northeast and southeast ones which are constrained by the Atlantic Ocean . SEE ALSO REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS |
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