Nature always wins

When I was a boy, I saw a TV movie about a group of people who had survived World War III by going underground. A few years after the nuclear holocaust they emerged to see if the land was habitable. They got into a car they found, started it up, and drove it down [...]

What if they built a bridge and nobody ever drove on it?

Here’s a weird one – a bridge along US 50 in southwestern Illinois that has an unused twin!

Here it is, up close and personal.

There are actually four such bridges along this 21-mile stretch of US 50 between Carlyle and Lebanon. The State of Illinois built them in about 1973 anticipating a four-lane divided highway that [...]

Three abandoned bridges in a row

As you drive US 50 in Illinois, in several places you parallel an older alignment of the road. The state has intended at various times to build a four-lane expressway out of US 50, to the extent that new lanes have been laid down with the presumable intent of rebuilding the old lanes to carry [...]

This post is brought to you by the letter S

I have this writer/artist friend who tries to get my engineering-school-educated roadgeek goat by saying things like, “Bridges are named after people who stir the soul, the poets and the artists! That’s why you never see bridges named after engineers!” In response, I usually make pshh noises and say things like, “Seeing his design built [...]

A kink in the Road

Last year I wrote on my Roads pages about a trip I took with a friend down US 40 and the National Road across western Indiana. We enjoyed finding forgotten and sometimes abandoned segments of the road’s original alignment.
Since then, thanks to the gang at the American Road forum, I’ve discovered the Automobile Blue Book, [...]