Tag Archives: Dixie Highway

TG ’24

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I did it again. I dunno, maybe I’m in a rut. I see that last year I had thoughts of Thanksgiving dinner at an Ohio or Indiana state park but waited too long to make reservations. I wrote that only the meal, and not an overnight stay, was actually considered for Ohio so maybe the lodges had already priced themselves out of contention. They certainly had this year, which made me drop them from consideration for the meal so quickly that I can’t say whether or not I would have been too late. But I did pick an Indiana park and I did make a call only to learn that the meal was sold out. Thankfully, Kentucky was there for me once again. BTW, one way of producing a washed-out photo such as this is to grab a camera last used for shooting in the dark and start snapping away without so much as a glance at sensitivity settings and such.

I again picked a park I had never been to in a part of the state that I was pretty unfamiliar with as well. Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park lies about 75 crow miles southeast of Lexington. I decided to reach Lexington on a semi-official Dixie Highway alignment, then head to the park on new-to-me back roads. I feared that the Log Cabin Inn would be closed on Thanksgiving Day but it was serving breakfast and had a sold-out dinner planned for later. Today I learned that the dog-trot cabin that forms the oldest part of the restaurant was moved here from Bardstown in the late 1800s. There’s a giant fireplace in each half of the original cabin and some good advice over the bar.

I called this section of Dixie Highway that passes through Falmouth, KY, while connecting Cincinnati and Lexington, “semi-official” because it was included as an alternate path then the Dixie Highway Association disbanded before an official choice was made between it and the original alignment through Florence, KY. Most of the route has been taken over by KY-17 and US-27 and become quite modern looking but some still looks much like it did when it was the DH. Some of the locals seemed mildly interested in my passing, though others could not care less.

That 75 crow miles between Lexington and Buckhorn Lake State Park became a little more than 110 road miles most of which looked like this. I thoroughly enjoyed the drive but there was near-constant — mostly quite light — rain and I did not take many pictures.

My scheduling was far from precise but at one point it looked like I was going to reach the park with nearly an hour to spare. Then I missed a turn. By the time I realized it and backtracked, all my cushion was gone. I reached the lodge at 3:31 for my 3:30 — last of the day — seating. The girl at the desk correctly guessed my name and I hurried downstairs to the dining room. The platters weren’t overflowing but there was still plenty of turkey, ham, and catfish plus most of the trimmings. Stuffing, it seems, had been depleted before I got there. I avoided a more significant disappointment with a preemptive strike. The dessert area was in full view from my table with the pie table filled with pumpkin and pecan pie when I sat down. At some point, I looked over to see the pumpkin pie side still well populated with just one piece of pecan left. I altered my plans just a bit to park that piece of pecan pie beside my plate while I finished the rest of my meal.

I now had time to check into my room in the lodge. It included a balcony which I’m sure offered a very nice view during warmer months. In late November, it simply let me verify that the pool was closed for the season and so too, apparently, was the lake.

Of course, it was too cold to sit on that balcony and really too cold to explore the park. I did return to the lobby to grab a shot of the Christmas tree and a clearer view of the lake at “low tide”.

As I headed out in the morning, I did a little exploring in the warm dry car which suited me much better than on foot in yesterday’s cold and damp. I’ve assumed that the low lake is an annual thing but don’t really know that and wish now that I had asked. I did not see any black bears but did read the instructions. I did see some other visitors. Only a few rooms were occupied in the lodge last night but a whole bunch of cabins had at least one car parked nearby. State parks are a pretty good place for families to spend holidays.

Then it was quite a few more miles of the sort of road that finished up yesterday but without the rain. One of these pictures was taken inside the Daniel Boone National Forest and the other just outside it. Hard to tell the difference, eh?

Breakfast was in Hazard at France’s Diner. Good food, good people, and a little local history on the walls.

I finally made it to the Mother Goose Inn in Hazard. It was built as a market and has been a store, a B&B, and a private residence but I couldn’t tell you what it is now.

I backtracked just a little from Hazard to pick up the Hal Rogers Parkway and head back into the Daniel Boone National Forest. I left it at London to head north on the Dixie Highway. Following one DH alignment to Lexington to start the trip then taking the DH back to Lexington and following another alignment back to Cincinnati seemed rather natural to me but it makes that Kentucky Thanksgiving rut I mentioned a little more obvious. Two years ago, I didn’t even do a Thanksgiving meal but spent the day driving this pair of DH alignments in Kentucky. The blog entry is here.

I paused to take a picture from the Clay’s Ferry Overlook and another at the 1871 bridge below. I contacted owner Jay Webb when I realized I would be coming by the overlook and, although we did not connect today, I do think we will be meeting here around Christmas.

Just a few miles north of the river, a large brontosaurus stands alone in an empty field watching traffic. About a quarter mile away, a smaller version uses a shed as a viewing platform. I assume they are somehow connected but what they are watching for is a mystery.

When I drove these two Dixie Highway alignments in 2022, I did them in the reverse order but that’s not the only difference. I could not cross the Roebling suspension bridge southbound because it was closed for a foot race that has since relocated to TQL Stadium. I did not cross it northbound because a slight detour prompted me to abandon the DH in the dark. This year, it was the historic Dixie Highway and the even more historic John A. Roebling Bridge both going and coming.

Trip Peek #141
Trip #128
Clinching the Dixie

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This picture is from my 2015 Clinching the Dixie trip. The basis for the trip was a Cincinnati Miata Club drive to Indianapolis but the name comes from what would happen after I reached Indianapolis. I had recently reached the point where the only part of the Dixie Highway I had yet to drive was the stretch between Indianapolis and Chicago, and the Miata outing seemed like the perfect prelude to wrapping it up. Club activities included visits to a couple of museums, a few meals, and one overnight. I spent a second night in the city after meeting friends for dinner. Google Maps says Indianapolis to Chicago is a three-hour trip but driving the Dixie Highway, with a couple of side trips thrown in, was a three-day affair. Cloud Gate (a.k.a., The Bean) is just a little bit beyond the Dixie Highway terminus in Chicago.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Some Dixie Highway for Thanksgiving

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The daily rate and a two-night minimum put the kibosh on preliminary thoughts of spending Thanksgiving night at a nearby state park lodge and other things got in the way of even making a reservation for the buffet there. Even so, I went to bed on Wednesday thinking that I would call about a last minute spot in the morning. By morning, however, I was ready to acknowledge that I would rather be driving than eating and set off to cruise some bits of the Dixie Highway that I had not been on for some time. In downtown Cincinnati, I was quickly reminded of the Thanksgiving Day Race that blocks several streets including the Roebling Bridge on which the Dixie Highway entered Kentucky from Ohio. I climbed onto the interstate and picked up the old auto trail on the other side of the river.

One reason the Dixie Highway makes for a good day trip south is that two alignments exist between Cincinnati and Lexington. The original path was pretty much straight south through Dry Ridge and Corinth. At some point, a path through Falmouth and Paris was proposed and recognized as an alternative by the Dixie Highway Association. Plans were to eventually pick one or the other but the Numbered US Highways came along and the DHA disbanded before a selection was made which leaves both alignments as somewhat official.

My pathway south was on the original alignment past the old gas station in Dry Ridge, the tin tepee (with recliner) near Williamsburg, and remnants of Fisher’s Camp near Corinth.

Lexington’s Main Street, which carried the Dixie Highway, is now one way northbound so I briefly left my southbound route to photograph the camel-topped Zero Mile Marker at Main and Limestone. While there, I slipped across the street to photograph just a few of the many painted ponies (actually thoroughbred racehorses) that decorate the city. I also snapped a picture at Thoroughbred Park before leaving town.

I had originally planned to pick up the other alignment in Lexington and head home but it was still fairly early and I decided to drive on to a place I had been interested in for a while. The first picture is of the modern bridge that currently carries I-75 and US-25 over the Kentucky River. The second picture shows the 1871 bridge that carried the Richmond-Lexington Turnpike, the Dixie Highway, and US-25 across the river. The third picture was taken from Clays Ferry Overlook on the south side of the river. Jay and Ashley Webb purchased this about a year ago and the Webbs have removed hundreds of truckloads of trash and cleared away trees to make it a real overlook again. Check out their Facebook page here. I did not prepare very well for my visit and I know there’s a lot of history here that I don’t yet know. I do know that the stone wall was built by the WPA in the early 1930s. This section of the road was relocated shortly before that but after it had become US-25. I believe that this is where the Richmond-Lexington turnpike and the Dixie Highway would have run.

I’d driven to Clays Ferry because of the big cleanup and because it wasn’t much more than a dozen miles from Lexington and I drove on to Richmond because it was only a dozen or so miles farther. In Richmond, I was definitely tempted to drive the dozen or so more miles to Berea but managed to stop myself. I took the expressway back to Lexington and the southern end of that Falmouth alignment. The slightly off-route moves I’d made earlier had not actually been necessary, I now discovered. Not only did my northbound route take me right by Thoroughbred Park, the route to Falmouth begins at Main and Limestone and the Zero Mile Marker.

The Dixie Highway, as I’m sure almost everyone knows, passes right through Paris. At its southern edge, Central Kentucky Classic Cars pulled me in to drool over a 1968 Camaro, lower my sights slightly to consider a ’55 Chevy sedan, then eventually move on with the free digital photos that were a better fit for my budget. Every Paris deserves an Eiffel Tower and this Paris finally got one in the summer of 2021. At 20 feet tall, it is considerably shorter than the original in France (1024 feet), and the replica just up the road from me in Kings Island (314 feet), but it’s still pretty cool. Incidentally, the Edward Shinner Building in the background was declared the “Tallest 3-story Building in the World” by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! which explains why its top got clipped in the photo.

Much of this Dixie Highway alignment has been taken over by US-27 but a few miles south of Cynthiana it moves to the west side on Mark Road then cuts back across the US route, slips through a narrow underpass, crosses a narrow bridge, and heads straight (but not quite level) into the Kentucky countryside on Old Lair Road.

Sunset occurred almost simultaneously with my reaching Punkyville so things were starting to dim when I took this driveby shot. When I first drove this alternate alignment in 2015, I stopped and explored Punkyville and I’ve done that a time or two since but not today.

Despite increasing darkness, I stayed with the Dixie Highway through Falmouth and Independence but encountered a road closure about three miles north of the latter town. By then, even though it was not yet 5:30, full-on darkness had arrived and I abandoned the DH for a more direct route home. I grabbed a shot of the last electric overhead sign I passed so I could share ODOT’s Thanksgiving greeting. 

Trip Peek #121
Trip #153
Kitty Hawk Holidays

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This picture is from my 2018 Kitty Hawk Holidays trip. It was a Christmas Escape Run so obviously the December 25 holiday was included but it started sufficiently early to include another holiday — the 115th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight on December 17. Stops on the way to Kitty Hawk, NC, included the National D-Day Memorial and Appomattox Court House. The anniversary was celebrated with ceremonies at Kill Devil Hill then I stuck around the area a couple more days in order to drive some of the Outer Banks Scenic Byway and check out other points of interest. Christmas was spent in Knoxville, TN, which I reached largely on US-64 and the Dixie Highway with several stops and side trips to Charlotte and Mount Airy. I reached home on December 27 following a last meal on the road at the since-closed Parkette Drive In in Louisville, KY.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Book Review
Tracing a T to Tampa
Denny Gibson

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Just like all but one of my previous books, Tracing a T to Tampa is a travelogue. Unlike any of those books, it is not about following a specific road or reaching specific destinations. It is about following a single specific trip. That trip is one made by my great-grandparents in 1920 in a Model T Ford. Throughout the 1920 journey, my great-grandmother sent a series of letters to her daughter in which town names were often included in her reports of what they were seeing and doing. Those town names allowed me to roughly reproduce their route. There are multiple reasons why my reproduction is a rough one. One is that roads have changed in the intervening years and another is that I usually had to guess at the path they took between the towns my great-grandmother mentioned. Some of those guesses are almost certainly wrong but proving it, should you be so inclined, would not be easy. Parts of the 1920 trip were clearly on the Dixie Highway and National Old Trails Road although neither is identified by name in the letters.

Frank and Gertrude, my great-grandparents, headed south from their western Ohio home and entered Florida almost directly south of Valdosta, GA. They reached Jacksonville and Miami on the east coast then crossed the center of the state to check out Tampa. Despite the book’s title, Tampa was not their stated destination when they left home but it was more or less where their exploration of new Flordia territory came to an end. The rest of their time in Florida would be spent mostly revisiting places from just a few “base camps”. 

I began the trip chronicled in this book on the exact 100th anniversary of the original: November 4, 2020. The original was four months long; the recreation a little less than four weeks. My great-grandparents reached Tampa after a little more than a month on the road. They would leave Florida a little more than two months later and spend just over two weeks getting home. Although they left Florida on the same path that brought them there, they would move away from it in the middle of Georgia to visit the nation’s capital in Washington.

Tracing a T to Tampa is illustrated with more than 100 photographs; primarily from the 2020 trip. There are, however, several historical photos mixed in. A transcript of the original letters is included.

1920 and 2020 can both be considered “interesting times”. Both contained a presidential election and were in a period of considerable racial unrest. 2020 was in the middle of a major pandemic and one had just ended in 1920. 1920 was also made interesting by the recent ending of a worldwide war and the passage of the 18th and 19th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. All of these are noted, but not dwelled upon, in the book.

Tracing a T to Tampa, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2021, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 217 pages, ISBN 979-8739822550.

Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there. Other Trip Mouse books described here.

Big To Do at Wigwam 2

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The first night I stayed at a Wigwam Village of any vintage was April 22, 2004, when I pulled into Wigwam Village #2. There was no neon outlined tepee like the one at right to greet me. I had driven down after work which put me at the village a little after 10:00 PM. The office and gift shop were in use but weren’t open that late. I retrieved the key that had been left for me in the mailbox and let myself in.

There were lights in front of the office including a neon VACANCY, OFFICE, and arrow. I have no pictures from this visit that show the neon tepee lit and I believe it was completely non-functional but my memory isn’t good enough to swear to that. I got an external shot of the office tepee that included the sign and an internal photo with owner Ivan John.

John retired and sold the motel about a year later. Things had really deteriorated prior to his 1996 takeover and the deterioration commenced anew after his departure. It might not have been immediate. The picture at right of the lighted neon tepee was taken in 2007 and I don’t know if its resurrection came before or after John left. It is the image I used to represent the village in A Decade Driving the Dixie Highway. While John ran the place, a playground and picnic tables were added and the rooms refurbished while retaining most of the original wooden furniture. Since at least 2007, I don’t believe much effort or money has been invested in improving the village until new owners came along in November.

Even if I did not know what was planned for today, I might have seen the ladder at the sign as a clue. There really isn’t much on the outside of the tepees to indicate how much work Keith and Megan have done. The grounds look neater but that’s about it. Even inside there are no dramatic changes. Bathroom fixtures have been updated but the general deep cleaning and repainting may not be immediately obvious.  My habit of posting little collages of motel rooms had not yet been established when I stayed here in 2004 and 2007 so the oldest internal view I have to compare with today‘s is one from 2009.

Megan and Keith had begun accepting a few guests in March but today was a sort of grand-opening of Historic Wigwam Village No. 2 with nine wigwams revitalized and rented. A tepee-shaped cake and some very accurate cookies really added to the occasion.

Megan and Keith each spent a few minutes talking about their experiences during their fairly brief ownership and about their plans for the future. Then they threw the switch that illuminated the recently replaced neon on the sign. It looked good immediately and even better as the sky darkened. In his remarks, Keith noted that they thought bringing the sign to life was an important and highly visible indicator of their intentions to bring the whole village back to life. I think he’s right and it seems that a lot of others do too.

My Caboodles — Chapter 4
Lee Markers on Dixie Highway

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Like the Madonna of the Trail monuments in an earlier My Caboodles chapter, these, too, are a natural for me. Like the Madonnas, they are markers along the side of a famous historic highway that I have traveled. But there are significant differences. The biggest is that the primary purpose of these markers was not to mark the highway but to promote the memory of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. This aspect is discussed a bit more in an earlier post, Free? Advertising on the Dixie. In this post, I’ll just present the markers in the sequence I discovered them.

1. In 2008, when I stumbled upon this marker in front of the Madison County courthouse in Marshall, North Carolina, I had no idea there were others. I was excited to find something with a Dixie Highway reference but even then I must have felt it was off-target just a bit. In my journal, I said, “At least it’s sort of a Dixie Highway marker.” On the morning of November 5, 2020, it was discovered that this plaque had been pried from its stone. Erected 1926.

2. Just a couple of months after discovering the marker in Marshall, I took my first picture of the marker at the NC-SC state line. By then I was aware of the eight markers in the Carolinas, but not of the two outliers. In October 2017, vandals pried the plaque from the marker and its whereabouts are unknown. The third photo was taken in December 2017. Erected 1928.

3. By January 2012, I’d learned of two markers outside the Carolinas. Discovering that one was less than 18 miles north of where I live was actually shocking. In August 2017, just a couple of months before the plaque was ripped from the NC-SC state line marker, this one near Franklin, Ohio, was the target of planned demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. The city shortcircuited things by removing the rock and plaque in the middle of the night. The monument has since been returned to public view on private property about two and a half miles north of its original location. Erected 1927.

4. On the second day of my 2014 Christmas trip, I reached all of the Carolina markers which included six I’d not seen before. Just as the second marker I photographed was barely inside the state’s southern border, the first one of this outing was barely inside its northern border with Tennessee. Erected 1928.

5. I believe of all the Lee-Dixie markers I must have driven by without noticing, I’m baffled the most by this one mounted in a huge brick base in Hot Springs. Erected 1926.

ADDENDUM 16-May-2024: This plaque was stolen in March 2022. Discussions by city officials over whether to replace the plaque with a replica or something different were continuing as of May 1, 2024. Discussions and plans have been hampered by uncertainty as to who owns the land where the marker stands.  

6. The next marker in geographic sequence was the one in Marshall but the next new-to-me marker was in downtown Asheville where it shares space with the 65 foot tall Vance Memorial and a tribute to Drover’s Road. On the day I took my picture, someone had draped a shirt over one of the Drover’s Road pigs. At about the same time that the plaque was pried from the NC-SC marker, an attempt was made to do the same here. The bent corner in the blurry drive-by picture is evidence of that. The face was also badly scratched in a subsequent attack. On July 10, 2020, the marker was removed and put into storage. Erected 1926.

7. I failed to pick out the marker in Fletcher when I drove by it the first time but I did better on my second pass. On pass number two, I was able to spot it trying to blend into the shrubbery. Erected in 1926.
ADDENDUM 27-May-2023: I have just learned that the plaque was removed from this marker in October 2020. According to information here, the removal was initiated by the church where the boulder stands and the plaque was returned to the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

8. The marker in Hendersonville wasn’t particularly hard to spot. It’s a tradeoff but I think I prefer a little tougher hunt and the shrub as background rather than the red car. Erected 1926.

9. Geographically, the next marker was the already photographed one at the NC-SC state line. That meant the next new-to-me marker was the lone South Carolina marker in Greenville. It’s actually a block off of the Dixie Highway but I don’t know whether it was moved to be with a group of Confederate monuments or was originally erected there. Aside from its placement, the marker is unusual in that it identifies a specific United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter rather than the overall organization which makes the plaque a bit taller than the others. It was also erected several years later than any other Lee-Dixie marker and several years after the Dixie Highway ceased to formally exist. Erected 1935.

10. I completed the caboodle several days later when I reached the only marker in Florida. It was placed about the same time as most of the others and the text is quite standard, but it is unique in other ways. The most obvious differences are the smooth marble base rather than a rough boulder and a plaque that appears to be made of steel rather than bronze. Lastly, the image of Lee is similar but not identical to the others. Erected 1927.

I had started towards home when I stopped at the Florida marker, but before I actually reached home, I drove by the Ohio marker just so I could say I saw all ten on the same trip.

Trip Peek #104
Trip #102
South from the Wrong Turn

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This picture is from my 2012 South from the Wrong Turn day trip. In 2017, the Robert E Lee – Dixie Highway marker in the picture was moved to private land a couple of miles to the north but in 2012 it stood where two Dixie Highway alignments separated just south of Franklin, Ohio. I was aware of both alignments and thought I had driven them both but I had not been aware of the marker and had not seen it. Learning of the marker led to me realizing that my idea of where the alignments split was incorrect. I had made a wrong turn when I’d driven the Dixie Highway in this area, and I made this trip to correct that.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Dam Dents Revisited

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I know I can’t do this forever, but I let the Facebook crowd steer me to another blog post this week. This one is somewhat different in that it doesn’t involve something new to me but some things I’d seen multiple times in the past that I was due for a refresher on. Back in 2006, I did Oddment pages on two dams that altered the path of the National Road north of Dayton, Ohio. Those pages are here, for the Taylorsville Dam, and here, for the Englewood Dam. The next year, I wrote an article for American Road Magazine (Vol V Num 3) that talked about both dams. The name of this post comes from the name of that article.

The first photo at left shows the easternmost edge of the easternmost dent. The road runs south for about a mile and a half before turning west to cross the mile-long dam then turning north to rejoin the original route. The dam is shown in the opening photo, which some will recognize as my attempt to reproduce George R. Stewart’s Photo #27 from 1953’s US 40: Cross-Section of the United States of America. Stewart’s photo and my “update” concentrate on the spillway and the bridge that crosses it. More of the massive earthen dam can be seen in the picture at left. The dams were completed in 1922 in response to the horrific 1913 flood. At that time, this was still known as the National Road. It would become US-40 in 1926. The 1953 and 2020 photos show some differences in the bridge itself due to a 1979 rehabilitation. The National Old Trails Road, a continent crossing named auto trail that existed from 1912 to 1926 never crossed these dams since the NOTR followed the “Dayton Cutoff” south through Dayton and Eaton.

There is a small paved area at the east end of the Taylorsville Dam where I parked to photograph it. On the west end, there is an actual park area with considerably more parking space and several informative signs including one from the Ohio National Road Association on Tadmor and Taylorsville. A section of the extensive Miami Vally Trails system passes through here and makes it easy to get to the former location of the town of Tadmor about 1.3 miles away.

The first of these pictures was taken looking back to the south after I’d strolled beyond Tadmor. I have been to the site since the dual purpose plaque (readable here and here) was placed but there are more labeled posts than I remember. Another difference is the rather impenetrable growth between the path and the river. There is a narrow path next to the previously pictured Tadmor sign that leads directly to the abutments of a short bridge that crossed the canal. Because of the growth and my aging sense of adventure, I did not go beyond this today as I did in 2006. The third picture shows a wall of the canal sluice gate with the canal bridge abutments in the foreground.

The rules called for the National Road to follow a straight line to the capital city Columbus with no grade greater than 10%. At Tadmor, following both of these rules in the early 19th century was impossible and it was the straight-line rule that lost. The road turned to the south on the west bank of the Great Miami and curved around a large hill. The grade, though not as bad as climbing the hill, still gave westbound travelers and their animals quite a workout. A spring near the top was certainly a welcome sight. The spring can be reached by heading east a bit where US 40 picks up the original path of the National Road. Although it’s not easy getting a clear view of the spring-fed waterfall, it is pretty easy imagining how refreshing it was to a team of horses dragging a Conestoga wagon up from the riverbank. A less blown-out version of the plaque is here.

An intersection between the dents has a legitimate claim on the Crossroads of America. In the days before US Numbered Highways, the National Road and the Dixie Highway crossed here. With the coming of numbers, the crossing routes became US-40 and US-25. A fair amount of traffic still passes through the intersection today though not nearly as much as through the nearby intersections of the successors to these routes, I-75 and I-70. The memorial bench and explanatory sign are just west of the intersection. A detail lifted from the sign explains a detail lifted from the photo of the intersection.

Continuing west, I came to the beginning of the second dent. Behind those trees on the right is a bypassed earlier curve which I slipped onto for a photograph. The entrance to the eastern portion of Engelwood Metropark is right at the eastern end of the dam. There is parking space for several cars and that is where I paused to photograph the dam and explanatory sign.

The road through the park is one-way which requires the former National Road, now called Patty Road, to be driven from west to east. Since all my other driving in this post has been east to west, that’s the sequence in which I’ve arranged these photos. The little bridge doesn’t look particularly historic when driving over it but the underside is a different story. The second picture shows the bridge from the north side and there’s a view from the south here. A sign that once stood near the bridge has gone missing so I’ve included a photo of it from 2006. The third photo shows where the National Road once continued westward. I walked down it in 2006 but did not today. There really isn’t much to see as a water-filled borrow pit prevents reaching the river.

This is on the west side of the Stillwater River in the smaller portion of Engelwood Metropark. I’ve been in the park before but did not do much exploring. Today I walked an abandoned section of the National Road down to the river. I’ve heard, and have even told others, that there are pieces of bridge abutments along the river. That might be true, but I didn’t see any today. I also didn’t see an explanatory sign mentioned in a Facebook post by William Flood, author of the upcoming Driving the National Road & Route 40 in Ohio: Then and Now. Further online discussion indicated that it might have gone missing from this wooden post. Not finding the sign certainly wasn’t an issue since looking for it is what led me to the riverside and that’s a good thing.

Yes, I had breakfast. The Mell-O-Dee Restaurant isn’t exactly on the National Road, but about two miles to the south where it’s been since 1965. COVID-19 precautions include a closed counter, plexiglass dividers between booths, and masked staff. They bake their own bread and pies and their French toast is made with that bread. It’s what I ordered and devoured with another COVID-19 precaution, disposable utensils.

Beside the Dixie Highway

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A recent Facebook post reminded me of some roadside markers I’ve been meaning to check out since 2012, and another post made me newly aware of some totally unrelated markers in the same general area. That area also happens to contain a restaurant that’s been on my to-do list for over a year. In these days of dissolved and dissolving travel plans, this trio of minor roadside attractions was sufficient justification for a correspondingly minor road trip. Although not one of the three has any real connection to the Dixie Highway, it once ran by all of them.

The restaurant came first. I first learned of the Fantasy Diner and Ice Cream Parlor from a January 2019 Ronny Salerno blog post. The name comes from its home in what was once the gift shop for the Fantasy Farm Amusement Park. Ronny’s post not only does a much better job than this one in documenting the restaurant but also provides some park history. There are a couple of reasons that I wish I had refreshed my self on Ronny’s post before I left home. One is that I’d have been shocked to find that the great looking wooden counter he photographed has been largely sacrificed for an ice cream cooler and would have at least asked about it. The second is that I might have changed the timing of my arrival in order to try the fried chicken he called “fantastic”. But I was there for breakfast and quite enjoyed my French toast with a view.

Following breakfast, I continued north on the former Dixie Highway to Middletown and made a stop at a marker I’d first noticed eight years ago. The marker is from 1920 when it was erected as part of a Road of Remembrance project. The Road of Remembrance was a proposal to plant a tree for every American soldier who had served in the Great War. A matching marker can be seen almost directly across the road in the second picture and up close in the third. The plaques on both markers look like this. These currently stand near Truth Tabernacle on OH-4, but originally marked the south end of Middletown’s Road of Remembrance a short distance away.

Another pair of markers once stood at the north end of the long rows of trees. Both are shown in the opening photo standing in front of the local American Legion Post. Identical plaques, bearing the names of twenty-four local boys killed in the war, are mounted on the front of both markers. The names of more than a thousand who served in the war are on six plaques mounted on the other sides of the pillars.

References to the Middletown Road of Remembrance often mention a thousand trees lining a mile of roadway. Both seem to have been considerably exceeded. The markers that now stand at the Legion, originally stood at 14th and Main. The southern markers originally stood about a mile and a half away at Oxford and Main. Plans to construct arches over the road where the markers stood were mentioned, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that ever happened. Middletown’s Road of Remembrance was dedicated on Labor Day, September 6, 1920, and there are possibly legitimate claims that this was the nation’s first Road of Remembrance to be completed. The ad image is from American Forestry, Volume 26.

The day’s third set of targets was on a later Dixie Highway alignment which I turned south on when I reached the split near Franklin. This photo is not of an active target, but when you are looking for things on the DH and not in the least related to it, this marker certainly qualifies. I’ve previously stopped and photographed this salute to the Poland China hog, and I did it again.

The real goal of my drive on the later DH alignment was a couple of Great Miami Turnpike mile markers. The turnpike was constructed in 1840 so the markers have been waiting quite a while. I learned of them only recently through a Dixie Highway Facebook group post by road fan Karl Howat. I’d already located and taken a drive-by photo of the southernmost of the two and thought I knew enough to find the other one as I drove south. I was wrong. I visually scoured the roadside as I drove but came up empty. I eventually reached the marker I had already located and parked nearby to take some less blurry photos. According to the markings, C(incinnati) is 17 miles away and D(ayton) is 33 miles away. The current name of this path that has had many is Cincinnati-Dayton Road.

I headed back north in search of the other marker and found it with a fortuitous and pretty much accidental glance to the right. Karl had posted photos of both markers and I could see that both were made to be placed on the west side of the road. Northbound travelers would see the distance to Dayton and those headed south would see the distance to Cincinnati. It appears that this marker switched sides at some point in its past. But that’s not the most interesting thing about it. Perhaps understandably, when I first saw the marker, my mind registered D 26 and C 24. But I quickly realized that the 4 my mind saw was reversed and that it must really be the number 1 with some accidental scratches beside it. That, however, would mean this stone claimed that Dayton and Cincinnati were 47 miles apart rather than the 50 indicated on the other marker. I next tried to mentally convert that 6 to an 8 to make the distance a closer match at 49 miles. That didn’t work and I became pretty certain that the numeral was a 6. A one mile difference between the two stones seems possible if not likely. A three mile difference seems very unlikely and I’ve become convinced that the carver goofed and carved the 4 in backward. Form your own opinion from this composite or go check out the original at N39° 25.809′ W84° 21.947′. The other marker is at N39° 20.126′ W84° 24.144′.

For the second consecutive week, here’s a diner tacked on to the tail of the primary subject. K’s Hamburger Shop isn’t exactly on the Dixie Highway but it’s less than two blocks away and that’s close enough for Mike Curtis to include it as a POI on his Dixie Highway Map. Plus there are some unverified rumors that a temporary DH alignment ran right past the location (even though it wasn’t K’s yet). DH or not, they celebrated their 85th anniversary Friday and I was there. They were totally closed for eleven days due to the COVID-19 pandemic, then open for carryout only. Three weeks ago, with the addition of some fancy plexiglass dividers, dining in became an option. Says Marcia, the owner, “My parents kept this place going through the depression and we’ll keep it going through this pandemic.”

Booths are separated by fixed panels and the panel separating counter customers and staff is fixed, but the panels between individual counter positions are hinged so that couples can chat and sneak fries from each other. Panels and everything else are sanitized frequently, of course. The only not-yet-cleaned spot in the counter picture is where I just finished this. Among the many articles written about K’s over 85 years is an American Road Diner Days installment from an unknown (both then and now) writer. Winter 2007 if you’re a curious collector of old magazines.