Freeways – RDZ Photography

Across Arizona – June 2022 – Freeway Art

Architecture, Art, History, Transportation

As you drive around the freeways of Phoenix and Tucson one of the first things you will notice is the artwork along the roadways. With little vegetation growing the Department of Transportation took the approach of incorporating artwork either within the concrete structures or with stone along the banks.

Much of the artwork is based on native cultures. It definitely adds to the usually boring aspect of a freeway.

A big thank you goes to my wife who (wisely) was the photographer for all of these photos, as well as many other ‘moving shots’ on the trip.

The Department of Transportation has a website called ‘The Art of Transportation’ if you would like to get more information and photos. https://azdot.gov/tags/art-transportation

Idaho Panhandle – May 2022 – Vastly Different Vibes

Architecture, History, Nature, Transportation

Our first entry into Idaho on this trip was in the northern panhandle. First stop was the small town of Wallace, and the nearby ‘ghost town’ of Burke

Burke is 7 miles up a canyon from Wallace. While it is known as a ghost town, there are still a few people residing in the area. It’s population was once 1400 (in 1910), now it is 15. It was the home to lead and silver mines. Now it is sort of a unique tourist destination to check out the abandoned buildings.

Back down the canyon is Wallace. When Interstate 90 was built from Boston to Seattle it’s route took it through these northern Idaho mountain to go past Wallace. Unfortunately the valley is very narrow here, and the good folks of Wallace didn’t want their town wiped out for the freeway, so for decades you could go from Boston non stop until you reached Wallace, where the road went through town – up to 10,000 cars a day.

The town decided this made it the ‘Center of the Universe’, with a sign proclaiming that fact to this day.

Finally they built the 4478′ long viaduct elevated above the town. And Wallace lost another of it’s claims to fame. But fear not, with the checkered history of Wallace they have other attractions in town, including a bordello museum (did not stop:)

About 40 miles further west is the small city of Coeur d’Alene. The entire town seems ‘squeaky clean’, with it’s lakefront resorts.

Virtual Travel – Kansas

History, Museum, Nature, Sports, Transportation

Toto we are back in Kansas!

1953 – Much like Iowa, Kansas is state that is virtually all farmland, although more grasslands than crops. The views on our opening map is of the capitol in Topeka, and a typical countryside road.

Topeka was a city of about 80,000 in 1953. Since then it has grown to a population of about 125,000. By far the largest employer in town is the state government. (photo from Cathy Luz Real Estate website)

1963 – Rest area on Interstate 70.

As the map shows, as well as the photo below, there are some rolling hills in Kansas. Kansas is a leading state for wind generated power.

1973 – Century II Performing Arts & Convention Center in Wichita. This facility is the largest of it’s kind in the state. It has hosted, among other things, the Miss USA Pagent.

Wichita is the largest city in Kansas, with a metro population of 645,000. It was founded as a trading post on the Chisholm Trail. (Photo from VisitWichita website)

Today it is known as the Air Capital of the World with numerous small aircraft manufacturers including Beechcraft, Cessna and Stearman. The Kansas Aviation Museum celebrates this history.

The museum is located in the former Wichita Municipal Airport terminal. (Photo from Museum website)

1973 – Kansas State Parks. Most Kansas State Parks are fairly small, the largest being Fall River State Park.

The most unique park in the state is Mushroom Rock. These rocks are a remains of sediment from the Cretaceous Period. (Photo from Wikipedia)

1989 – Rural scene. Over half the people in the state live in what is classified as ‘Rural’, one of the higher percentages in the country. Trivia moment – the highest percent rural population is Wyoming.

1993 & 2015 – Bison. Before Europeans showed up there were an estimated 20 million American Bison roaming the Kansas territory. Their demise was swift, as example the first three months of 1872 there were more than 43,000 bison hides shipped east from Dodge City alone.

Today there are a few refuges for the bison to continue to live. The largest is Maxwell Wildlife Refuge near the town of Canton, Kansas. (photo from Travelks.com)

2001 – Flint Hills. This region covers much of eastern Kansas, stretching into northern Oklahoma.

The area is very picturesque, and a nice break from the endless prairies beyond.

2003 – Collage including the Kansas Speedway. When the International Speedway Corporation was investigating building a speedway in the Kansas City area, they chose the Kansas side because of better funding (i.e. the State gave them more money than Missouri would).

2005 & 2009 – More prairie scenes.

2011 – 150 years of statehood celebrated by travel.

The two most famous Kansans are Dwight Eisenhower and Amelia Earhart.

Eisenhower was actually born in Texas but raised in Abilene, Kansas, where his Presidential Library is located (photo from travelks.com)

Earhart was born and raised in Atchinson, Kansas. Her childhood home is now a museum. (photo from kansastravel.org)

2013 – Celebration of Kansas Byways.

One of the more interesting byways is the Gypsum Hill Scenic Byway. It travels through rolling prairie as well as a section of red buttes. (photo kansastravel.org)

2017 – The Sunflower State.

We end this tour with Kansas State Symbols.

State Seal

Flag

Bird – Western Meadowlark

Virtual Travel – Indiana

Architecture, Art, History, Museum, Nature, Sports, Transportation

The Hoosier State – Indiana.

1946 – Dedicated to James Whitcomb Riley, Indiana’s Poet.

His boyhood home in Indianapolis is now a museum.

1953 – Intersection of Highway 52 and 136 in Indianapolis.

1957 – Tri State Express. This is the same freeway featured on the Illinois 1959 map.

Today that freeway is 10 lanes wide

The Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond has a statue from the movie Christmas Story. It was set in Hammond, but filmed in Cleveland.

1970 – Indiana State Capitol. Dating from 1888 it is the 4th building to be the Indiana Capitol.

2015 View.

1971 – The map as a map cover. Columbus, Indiana is shown on the right.

Columbus has a fantastic collect of modern architecture. Irwin Miller was the Chairman of Cummins Engine Company, and a fan of this type of architecture. His leadership resulted in a town known around the world for the quantity and quality of architecture.

1972 – Indiana Highway 37 near Bloomington.

Bloomington, home to Indiana University, is a small city in south central Indiana. (Photo from Bloomington Tourist Office)

1973 – A collection of signs.

1976 – Indianapolis – The Return Home on the Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

The Soldiers and Sailors Monument is the center of Indianapolis. Rising to a height of 284′ (87m) this obelisk has numerous statues surrounding it and an observation deck near the top. (photo from Wikipedia)

1978 – Unidentified country scene.

1979- Whitewater Canal State Memorial. In the early 1800s canals were built all over the country, and Indiana was no different. The route of the Whitewater Canal was unique in that it had a drop of almost 500′ at a rate of 6.4′ per mile, compared to the the Erie Canal at 1.7 feet per mile.

Located in the historic town of Metamora, the canal and the accompanying buildings give a sense of life in the early 1800s.

1986 – Indianapolis

Indianapolis, as the state capitol and largest city in the state. Highlights of the city include:

The Ruins of Holiday Park are remnants from an old building in New York City sitting in the middle of a park in Indiana.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway & Museum.

Indiana War Memorial Building

The former baseball stadium is now apartments.

Indianapolis Museum of Art. The time we were there they were having an exhibit on prototype automobiles.

The current baseball stadium

Lucas Oil Stadium – Home of the NFL Colts

Skyline view (Photo from Pintrest)

1991 – 175th anniversary of Indiana.

1994 – Indiana State Highways 75th Anniversary

1995 – Indiana Countryside. The tourist bureaus in Indiana play up the country life quite a bit.

Shipshewana is the largest tourist center for this ‘country life’. With some Amish residents it is common to see horse and buggies on the roads. In addition their flea market is one of the largest in the country. (Photo from Tourist Office)

1997 – Generic map

2001 – Transportation in Indiana. The Indianapolis Airport is the 5th largest air freight center in the country.

Indiana is the capital of RV production. Elkart has the RV Museum, as well as a number of manufacturing faciities.

2003 – As with the other states in the path, this year is a celebration of Lewis and Clark.

On October 26, 1803 Merriweather Lewis meet William Clark across the river from Louisville, Kentucky and set sail down the Ohio River. That spot is now known as Clarksville, Indiana. That meeting is celebrated at the Falls of Ohio State Park.

This park has a nice view of Louisville.

2004 & 2016 – Indiana State Museum. The current building pictured here was completed in 2001.

The building is over 40,000 square feet, and covers the natural and civil history of the state. Also included is the ’92 walk’ – a collection of sculptures representing each of the 92 counties in the state.

2005 – Wildflower.

A few of the the Indiana State Symbols include: (Photos from Wikipedia)

State Flag – 19 stars, representing Indiana being the 19th state.

State Motto – Crossroads of America.

State Seal – Depicts a setting sun, sycamore tree, a woodsman and a bison.

State Bird – Cardinal

State Flower – Peony

2009 & 2012 – Unidentified Road Construction Projects

Lincoln Highway construction in Indiana in the early 1900s.

2014 – Southern Indiana Hills

The largest city in Southern Indiana is Evansville. We made a stop there on Road Trip 2019.

Vanderburgh County Courthouse

Restored Art Deco Greyhound Station – now a hipster hamburger place.

Bosse Field – One of the oldest baseball stadiums in the country.

Primary filming location for the movie League of Their Own.

2015 – Bristol, Indiana – Bonneyville Mill. This mill is the oldest in the state. It was built by Edward Bonney in 1833.

2017 – Brown County State Park, Hesitation Point. This is the largest state park in Indiana, covering more than 15,000 acres. It is known for it’s scenic vistas.

2018 – Williamsport Falls. This 90′ high falls is the 2nd highest in the state.

The flow of the falls is very seasonal.

2019 – Berne, Indiana – Settled by Mennonite immigrants in 1852. The town has been built by Swiss and German immigrants, resulting now in a small town of 4,000 residents.

It is known for it’s picturesque town square.

Virtual Travel – Illinois

Architecture, Art, Festival, History, Museum, Nature, Sports, Transportation

Today’s stop – Illinois

1959 – With the Interstate’s recently been started, Illinois was proud to show one of their’s on the cover. At this time the only freeways in the state were in the Chicago area.

The Tri-State Tollway was one of the first completed. It was one of the first to built service plaza over the traffic lanes.

Hinsdale Oasis today

1961 – Cook County (Chicago) Motor Vehicle Office. From 1900 until 1960 Cook County had the largest population of any county in the United States. It has since been passed by Los Angeles, County, but remains 2nd most populated to this day.

By 1961 freeways had been built through Chicago to downtown from every direction. This view is the Northwest/AKA – Kennedy Expressway. Amazingly there are reversible express lanes in the middle.

This view from 2012 looks much the same.

1968 – Celebrating Illinois’ Sesquicentennial, 150 years of statehood. Who better than Abraham Lincoln for the cover.

1970 – View of the loop downtown Chicago.

1973, 1975 & 1978 – They must have fired the photographer.

1976 – A tribute to the Native Americans and pioneers. The first European explorers in the region were Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, which explains the number of French names for towns.

The Native American tribes included the Miami, Winnebago, Fox, Sacs, and of course – the Illinois.

Cahokia Mounds State Histori Site is the location of a pre-Columbian Native American city that they estimate once had 40,000 residents in the year 1100.

They were, as most tribes in this area, mound builders.

1979 – Transportation in Illinois. While Chicago was a center of the early automotive manufacturing by the 1920s much had gone out of business and moved to Detroit.

Today there are 3 automobile manufacturing facilities in Illinois. The most important is the Chicago Ford Assembly Plant.

This factory is the oldest continually operated factory for Ford.

1983 – Frank Lloyd Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright had a studio in Oak Park, and design a plethora of fantastic homes and buildings throughout Chicago, and the world.

1985 – People’s of the Past.

1987 – Festivals. Chicago has some of the country’s best festivals.

Chicago Festival

1989 – Another year, another Lincoln map.

World’s largest Lincoln statue. 72′ high, hanging out in a campground.

1989 – The hill country of Southern Illinois

1991 – Illinois & Michigan Canal. This canal linked the Illinois River to Lake Michigan, thus providing the first interior route from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

When it was in use mules or horses pulled the barges along the canal. (Photo – Chicago Public Library)

Today you can rent a longboat and spend a vacation on the canal. (photo – iandmcanal,org)

1993 – Celebrating Craftmaking.

1995 – History of Illinois Roads. When the first European settlers began to arrive in larger numbers they made their way inland via ‘traces’. These roads generally followed the Native American paths that had been used for hundreds of years.

1995 – Showing the Regions of Illinois.

1997 – Another Lincoln Statue. There are over 200 Lincoln statues in the United States.

This one is in New Salem, Illinois.

New Salem State Historic Site is a reconstructed town that Lincoln lived in from 1831 to 1837. It was from here he was first elected to public office. (Photo from Wikipedia)

Once again in the late 90s and early 2000s a state has chosen to have nondescript scenes on their maps.

2005 – War Memorials throughout Illinois.

2007 & 2011 – Again celebrating the regions of Illinois.

Chicago is easily the most visited part of the state. The architecture here is second to none.

Some highlights

2009 – Lincoln Presidential Library 2015 – Lincoln (again)

Located in Springfield it is an impressive building in a state full of Lincoln tributes.

2013 – Modes of Transportation

O’Hare Airport in Chicago in 1956 (photo from Airways Magazine). For you airport code trivia fans, most have seen baggage routing tags with ORD for this airport.

It was originally a small airport for a factory known as Orchard Place, and gained that code then. ORchardD.

Today

2015 – Mississippi River Bridge. It can easily be forgotten that there the Mississippi River runs the entire western boundary of Illinois. This bridge connects St Louis with southern Illinois.

2017 – Our last stop is at a Lincoln Cabin made out of …. Lincoln Logs.

Virtual Travel – California

Architecture, History, Nature, Sports, Transportation

Today we make our way to the Golden State – California. As most people know California is known for, among other things, their car culture. That culture apparently never translated to CalTrans, who never seem to have published maps.

Instead most Californians have relied on the auto club for their travel tools. The state has two major auto clubs – The Auto Club of Southern California and the California State Automobile Association, which covers Northern California.

The auto club maps rarely featured photos, mostly just graphically interesting maps.

For this posting we will mix together vintage Auto Club maps with photos from various years of the highlights of the state.

The map below dates from the 1950s and covers the entire state.

A view of the map itself shows the famed freeways of the state still a few years away. This view has the area from the coast around San Francisco to the mountains and Yosemite National Park, going south as far as Santa Barbara.

Our tour will start in San Francisco….

The view back toward downtown from Twin Peaks on a cloudy day.

While most of San Francisco streets are in a grid system, the area directly around Twin Peaks have streets with curves resulting in a haphazard look to the houses.

The Golden Gate bridge with the tops of the towers obscured by the low clouds.

The cool, weirdness of Haight Asbury.

Isotope Comic Book Shop and their artistic toilet lids.

San Francisco from Angel Island.

An evening at the Santa Cruz Beach.

San Luis Reservoir as we head towards the central valley.

Yosemite! One of the best National Parks.

The Central Valley is the produce capital of the country.

Sequoia National Park.

Kings Canyon National Park.

Let’s move on to Northeastern California.

Lassen National Park

Lava Tubes

Hieroglyphs in far northern California

Northwestern California is home to some amazing coastlines and forests.

Our tour of Northwest California starts out with the Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geysersville.

Lake Sonoma.

The Mendocino County coast.

Fort Bragg, California (not to be confused with the actual U.S. Army Fort Bragg in North Carolina).

One of the ultimate tourist traps – the Drive Thru Tree in Leggett, California.

Redwood Forest.

Eureka, California

We were lucky enough to be in Arcata, California for one of the coolest festivals we ever saw – the Kinetics Festival.

Trinity Lake

Shasta Dam and lake with Mount Shasta in the background.

This 1927 map is the Circle Tour of Southern California. Leaving downtown Los Angeles it takes you east past San Bernardino to Palm Springs, before heading south through the desert, finally returning to the coast at San Diego.

We will recreate the highlights of this tour 90 years later…

The Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles was there when this map was published.

Driving through the desert to Palm Springs.

Palm Springs from high up on Mount San Jacinto.

San Diego – This late 1940s map shows a San Diego that was just becoming a major city.

By 2012 it was a beautiful city by the bay.

Petco Park – Home of the San Diego Padres (trivia time – the Padres are the only major league sports team whose name is entirely in non English)

And finally back in Los Angeles – although this 1920s map is missing LAX (among other things).

Biloxi, Mississippi – May 2019 – No Blues In Biloxi

Architecture, Sports, Transportation

Welcome to Biloxi, Mississippi.

Biloxi has to be the only town in America that built their freeway exit ramp over the beach and slightly into the ocean.

Nearby is the rebuilt Biloxi pier, replacing the one destroyed by Hurricane Katrina

Being on the Gulf Coast, Biloxi has palm trees on the beach giving it that tropical feel.

In some perspectives it feels like a beach town.

One of the more impressive buildings in town is the Frank Gehry designed art museum.

Biloxi has had a long history of gambling, and from the 1990s on large casinos were built directly on the beach.

Biloxi is one of the larger gambling meccas in the country outside of Las Vegas.

The tall hotel/casinos dwarf their small motels across the main boulevard along the beach.

But there is more to Biloxi than the casinos. The town is only a couple of hours away from New Orelans, giving the town itself a similar look and feel.

The Half Shell Oyster House not only is a great looking building, but the food was fantastic.

Nearby is MGM Park, a minor league baseball stadium for the Biloxi Shuckers – a middle tier farm team for the Milwaukee Brewers.

The name celebrates Biloxi’s heritage in the seafood and oyster industries.

The crowd was sparse for this Thursday evening game.

Their mascot is a giant seagull named Schooner.

Columbus – September 2018 – Flying Into Town

Architecture, Nature, Transportation

On my return from New York I was on a very empty airplane, and happened to have the SLR camera with me. Once we can out of the clouds on the approach to Columbus I was able to get some photos.

About 50 miles east of the airport is Zanesville, Ohio. While very tough to see they have a famous ‘Y’ Bridge. This bridge has a Y intersection in the middle of it (and the river).

Buckeye Lake – The surrounding countryside would normally be as green as the trees but since it is late September the corn and soybeans have all turned brown, hence the interesting contrast.

As a city kid I always thought that meant they were dead, it really means it is time to pick them.

Note the 5 large white buildings. A few of them are Amazon fulfillment centers along I-70.

When you see the airport you are headed towards at this altitude you know you aren’t quite ready to land – which was good this day.

Northwest Columbus and Ohio State University.

A bit closer view of Ohio State, along with the Ohio 315 Freeway winding it’s way along the west side of campus.

A hard right turn gave us a great view of the old suburb of Grandview Heights.

Looking east back towards the airport (upper right) and downtown Columbus. Of note is the different of the main thoroughfares from the early days and now. Broad Street goes the entire distance top to bottom on the right side of the photo in essentially a straight line.

I-679 on the left side winds its way basically parallel to Broad Street, only with numerous curves since they were going through already developed neighborhoods (destroying many in it’s path).

Downtown Columbus. After a week in New York City it looks very sparse.

Continue the hard right turn we looked straight down on the Lane Avenue Bridge and a portion of Ohio Stadium.

The final view is of Ohio Stadium. There was something about the double windows of the airplane and the SLR wanting to focus that makes this photo almost look ‘fake’.

A few minutes later and we were on the ground.