History: Woodward History
The
year was 1909, and it was a big year in Detroit.
Ty Cobb led the Detroit Tigers to a League Pennant at Bennett Park, Henry Ford introduced
the Model T and J.L. Hudson was scouting out a location at Woodward and Farmer for
his department store’s new location.
Also that year, the Wayne County Road Commission introduced the world to a new kind
of road: Concrete. The only place it could be found that year was Woodward Avenue
between Six and Seven Mile Roads in Greenfield Township, which is now northwest
Detroit.
Roads up to that point – if they were paved at all - had been built with brick,
cobblestone, or a material called macadam, which was not much more than stones sprayed
with a tar to form some kind of wear resistant surface. Unfortunately, brick and
cobblestone were uneven and labor intensive, while macadam didn’t last long.
The need for a better type of road construction had been evident for years – even
before the advent of the automobile. A group of bicyclists, known as the League
of American Wheelmen, had initiated what came to be known as the "Good Roads Movement"
to help make bicycling more pleasurable than it had been on the area’s rough and
rutted roads.
When Henry Ford first started mass producing the automobile, the need for good roads
became a much more pressing issue. He, better than anyone, knew the viability of
his product was greatly limited unless there was a system of smooth, reliable roads
to carry and withstand automobile traffic. Ford himself found himself at the forefront
of the issue.
In 1906, the Michigan Legislature created the state’s first road commission in Wayne
County, and Henry Ford was a charter member. [Ford, however, would serve only one
year. He stepped down to avoid a conflict of interest because of his role in the
automobile industry.]
Within just three years, the Wayne County Road Commission embarked on an experiment
that would revolutionize the way roads were built and create a new standard that
has endured right up to the present day.
County engineers had heard success stories from Ohio and Windsor, Ontario where
concrete had been used for sidewalks and alleys. Road commissioners Edward Hines
and John Haggerty decided the time was right to test concrete on a major thoroughfare.
The section of Woodward Avenue between Six Mile Road [McNichols] and Seven Mile
Road was selected most likely because that is where the county's jurisdiction began,
but also because Ford's new Model T plant down the road in Highland Park would be
turning out a large number of new automobiles. Woodward also was a likely candidate
because it was one of the major transportation spokes radiating out of downtown.
As for the choice of concrete, this is how the road commission stated their reasoning
in its 1909 annual report: "we decided that a concrete road would come more nearly
realizing the ideal than any other form. The points considered were comparatively
low first cost, low maintenance cost, freedom from dirt and dust [there being no
detritus from a concrete road itself] its comparative noiselessness, and ease of
traction for vehicles of all descriptions."
The report further went on to state the following: "The cost of this piece of work
is considerably lower than the average cost of macadam roads constructed in New
York and Pennsylvania as taken from detailed reports of these states, and we believe
it to be superior in every feature to the best macadam road that can be built. However,
time alone can justify our judgment in the matter."
And it did. News of the accomplishment spread quickly, even for the time. "This
road has attracted a great deal of attention among the road builders of the entire
country, and numerous delegations have visited it during the past summer. We have
also been the recipients of many inquiries for information concerning it," the commission’s
1909 report reads.
Today, there are hundreds of thousands of miles of concrete road throughout the
world. And despite all of the technological advances of the past few decades, no
one has come up with a more reliable, cost effective material to build roads with
than concrete.
Not long after developing the first mile of concrete road, Wayne
County also developed the first painted centerline, perfected the snow plow and
built the world’s first below-grade superhighway, the Davison. Legend has it that
German engineers used Wayne County’s Davison Freeway accomplishment as inspiration
for the world famous Autobahn.
In recent years, Wayne County has continued to strive to be innovative. Just last
year, the county became the first in the nation to equip some of its salt trucks
with Global Positioning Satellite [GPS] technology to monitor the activities and
progress of its snow plows. Many expect that this will become a new standard for
all snow-belt states, one which will save money and make snow removal much more
effective and responsive.
This year, Wayne County is teaming up with the Road Commissions for Oakland and
Macomb counties and the City of Detroit, to test a multi-agency approach to snow
removal utilizing the GPS technology Wayne County implemented recently.
