Travel The Dixie Highway Through Georgia: America's First North-South Trans-Continental Route!

Travel the Dixie Highway, America's first North-South Trans-Continental route through our very own "peach state".

Postcard of the Dixie HighwayPhoto byPhotographer Unknown

The Highway not only runs through the heart of our very own state of Georgia, it also travels through the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Florida. The highway totals over 5,786 miles.

This highway was proposed by an Indiana businessman named Carl G. Fischer. Mr. Fischer's business interests were mainly in the realm of transportation.

On April 3rd, 1915 governors of states interested in the highway met in Chattanooga. Each governor selected two commissioners to lay out the direction of the route from Illinois to Miami.

The route was then placed from Chicago to Indianapolis where it would split. The west branch of the Dixie Highway went towards Tennessee through Louisville, Nashville and Chattanooga. The east route of the Dixie Highway went from Indianapolis to Dayton before heading south. Once the east highway was pointed south, it went through Cincinnati, Lexington, Knoxville and Chattanooga.

Two alternate routes were included to Chattanooga which would travel between here and Atlanta, Georgia and again from Atlanta to Macon. Then from Macon to Tallahassee before the Dixie Highway turned east.

From Tallahassee, the highway followed the east coast south to Miami.

The comission then voted to invite the state of Michgan into the Dixie Highway's route as well and to extend a branch of the highway of the east route from Dayton north to Detroit. They also studied a loop around the Lake Michigan and a western route between Tallahassee and Miami.

Within a week, Michigan agreed to constructing a loop around the Lower Peninsula passing through Toledo, Ohio, South Bend, Mackinaw City and Detroit. Detroit became the northern end of the eastern division of the Dixie Route with the old route to Indianapolis being a connecting link.

In early April of 1916, the commission approved and agreed to a route of the Dixie Highway between Macon, Georgia to Jacksonville by heading through Savannah and designated the more direct route through Waycross, Georgia as the central division. By the urging of locals, the eastern division was rerouted to a more direct path northwest from Milledgeville to Atlanta through the "Old Capital Route". This route bypassed Macon.

The route begins in Saulte-Sainte Marie, Michigan and travels through the Midwest before heading towards the Southeast to the highway's Southern terminus at the beaches of Miami, Florida.

Wikipedia and Library of Congress