Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Interstate 69

Occasionally I like to feature some of the highways that slice through the state of Michigan.  In one way, I've covered I-75, I-94, US-12 and a few others.  Since I was taking I-69 out of Port Huron, I figured this would be a good opportunity.
 The idea for I-69 came about in the 1940's as part of the Interregional Highway System. This would have been the pre-cursor to the Superhighway System that was proposed by Eisenhower in the 50's.
 The freeway stretches from Port Huron to Indianapolis.  There are proposals to have it extended all the way down to Texas.  As a result, it has been nicknamed the NAFTA Freeway.
 It seems like it took forever to complete the Michigan stretch of the freeway.  I remember it having the Temporary I-69 designation for the longest time.  If you had reason to go through Lansing, there was a point where you actually had to go through the city, to get on the southbound portion of the freeway.  This was finally ended in 1992 with the completion of the portion from I-96 to Lansing.
However, I was only going as far as Flint.  Here is a shot of one of the GM factories in Flint.

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