ODS - Outer Drive Series - 131 Traditional Cache

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Hidden : 2/4/2012
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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This series is dedicated to that little-known Gem of Detroit called
Outer Drive.  This series can be done in part, or complete as
a whole...whatever you choose to do, it will most definitely give
you a nice tour of some special parts of the Metro
Area.



Outer Drive is a bypass road which
encircles both the eastern and western portions of the Metro
Detroit area. It resembles a jagged horseshoe and was not
originally intended to move traffic as much as to provide a
pleasurable drive around Detroit. This drive would include travel
through beautiful subdivisions (many of which have deteriorated
badly), school sites and park areas. First proposed in 1918, it
immediately won acceptance and eventually evolved into the road
that exists today.

It starts and stops and starts again. It runs north, south, east
and west, twisting in long curves and turning in sharp
angles.

There are residential, commercial and industrial sites, sometimes
all within a few blocks of each other.  Outer Drive is one
bizarre road, stretching more than 40 miles in a jagged horseshoe
from the East Side at Mack Avenue (the Detroit-Grosse Pointe Park
border) to Jefferson Avenue in Ecorse, Downriver-area of the
Metro.

Newspaper and magazine articles contained in the Burton Collection
at the Detroit Public Library provide insight into what has to be
one of the oddest city thoroughfares in the country.

A Detroit News article from 1922 provides this
account of the road’s origins:

“With its end at the extreme east and west sides of
Detroit, its route clustered with beautiful subdivisions, potential
residence districts, school sites, park areas and parkways, an
Outer Drive, still unnamed, is fast emerging from its state as the
dream of a former Detroit mayor into a reality.

“The history of the Outer Drive is brief. A committee was
appointed by Mayor Oscar B. Marx, in February, 1918, to study the
advisability of such a highway. Members of the committee had no
sooner investigated the project than they became interested.

Interest led to something akin to enthusiasm when a comprehensive
report was filed recommending ‘a boulevard 150 feet wide to
encircle the city eight miles from its center on the east and
north, connecting with Oakman Highway on the
west.’”

A 1929 article in Michigan Women
magazine predicted: a “great pleasure boulevard”
that will “lie like a necklace around
Detroit…”

It was laid out as a grandiose parkway and not intended to move
traffic efficiently from one place to another, but to be a
picturesque drive instead.

The concept originated at the 1892 World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago, where an urban planning model dubbed
“City Beautiful” was unveiled. Conceived in reaction to
the industrial age, the model provided city planners with
strategies to reclaim urban areas from factories and skyscrapers by
envisioning development on a more human scale.

Some folks have noted  that it was a broad, sweeping
philosophy, where the intent was to create “the ultimate city
for the working man.”

The best-known example of this type of planning approach is
Lakeshore Drive in Chicago. It has also been noted that the problem
with Outer Drive is that it was built piecemeal. To expedite
construction, it was linked to  existing roads whenever
possible. That explains why it suddenly becomes part of Chandler
Park Drive, for instance.

South of the State Fairgrounds the stretch of road is called,
appropriately, State Fair. West of Woodward, near Palmer Woods,
neighborhood associations in the 1920s successfully blocked
construction, claiming the increased traffic would hurt property
values.

The homes along the entire stretch of Outer Drive do not have a
consistent design or style throughout because construction came
subdivision by subdivision.

Outer Drive also has managed to maintain it's reputation as a
"status address" for many folks that live along the
road.





And now...we dedicate
this series of Caches to this most unique and unusual road across
Metro Detroit.

 

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