The Dixie Highway: the Western Division Runs Through Roseland

1914–1926, the named-route era

The corridor's first famous name was the Dixie Highway — and its division is the Western. The Dixie Highway Association was organized at Chattanooga in early December 1914; the governors of the interested states met there on 3 April 1915, and on 22 May 1915 the commission chose a split route so more communities could be served. Within a week Michigan agreed to a loop around the Lower Peninsula running through Toledo, South Bend, Mackinaw City and Detroit, and by 1917 the highway had been extended north to Sault Ste. Marie. For Indiana, the road from South Bend south is the Western Division in the state's own terminology: INDOT's Indiana Bridges Historic Context Study (2007) prints it verbatim — "The Western Division traversed Indiana from South Bend at the north, through Plymouth, Logansport, and Michigantown to Indianapolis, and then on to Martinsville, Bloomington, Bedford, and Paoli, to Louisville" — while "The Eastern Division ran through Ohio with an east-west connector route between Dayton and Indianapolis." The road reaching the state line above Roseland is the Dixie West Branch in Michigan's terminology. An older form carried in this county sequence's earlier builds, which attached the South Bend–Indianapolis line to the Eastern Division as a connecting link, is not sustained by the INDOT study and is registered against it at C47; this section follows the study. Through Roseland the Dixie is dated at association strength only: the road-history survey records that the Dixie Highway entered Indiana "just north of South Bend on what is now US 31," and no carrier dates a signing or paving act specifically in the town.

Sources: INDOT, Indiana Bridges Historic Context Study, 1830s–1965 (M&H Architecture, February 2007), Dixie Highway section, verbatim (in.gov); the Dixie Highway association chronology (1914–1917); Michigan Highways, Historic Auto Trails (the West Branch); Jim Grey, Down the Road, "The Dixie Highway in western Indiana" (April 21, 2023).