12 July 2006: Chicago, IL to Sandusky, OHContinuing on the "catchup" run from the 9th, we cross into Indiana and then Ohio. Off we go.
Resuming from south Chicago and our turn on US 6 onto I-80/I-94, we (presently) enter a morass of construction. For this reason, I found no Indiana state line marker heading east at the present time (and if there is one, it's non-obvious). However, traveling westbound, this bridge has a "Welcome to Illinois" sign on the back and the blue mileposts Indiana uses start immediately after, so I will conclude that this is the state line.
This is part of the US 35 junction near Kingsford Heights, a small town US 6/US 35 mostly bypasses to the east with a bizarre World War II history. Originally, the town was planned by FDR and the War Department to be built as "Victory City" in 1942 as housing for workers in the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant to the north (north of this junction along US 35). Security was such that even the street names were intentionally obfuscated, set up in such a way that only the first letters were the same of continuous streets so that navigation was nearly impossible without knowing the key. This curious layout persists to this day. After the war, most of the workers left and the remaining residents incorporated themselves into the present-day town in 1956. Its population today numbers 1,453 [2000].
Both Indiana and Illinois have the same basic type of state marker, a rectangle with the name in it and that's it. This is marginally better than Maine, for example, which just has the rectangle, but it's not very inspiring and it can be hard to tell the state routes apart on highways that cross back and forth since only the name is different (although Indiana uses black trim on big green signs).
This was taken in Butler, near the Ohio border, a town of 1,805 [2000].
Napoleon's old route is largely preserved by a business routing
which is marked in the field as "NAPOLEON BUSINESS ROUTE" --
it is not signed as BUSINESS US 6 from
the highway, nor does it appear as a true business route on my maps or NAVTEQ,
so we will simply mention it for reference. The seat of Henry county, named
for patriot Patrick Henry with a population of 29,210 [2000],
Napoleon was named for (who else?) French dictator and conquerer Napoleon
Bonaparte and has a
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Floodgap and the Summer of 6.