The Dixie Highway: the feeder that became a main line

1914–1926 · THE NORTH–SOUTH TRAIL

The Dixie Highway reached South Bend as somebody else's feeder, and stayed: Before the Dixie Highway Association existed, Indiana newspapers were already calling the proposed Indianapolis–South Bend road a "feeder route" to the Lincoln Highway, and the counties between the two cities were at work on it: in October 1914 the Indianapolis News reported the citizens of the counties between Indianapolis and South Bend preparing to work the link on a single day, the 27th. The trail movement organized itself the next spring — the Dixie Highway Association was organized and incorporated on 3 April 1915 at Chattanooga, out of discussions begun in 1914 by Carl Fisher, the Lincoln Highway's own promoter, and H. L. Gilbreath of the Hoosier Motor Club, with Governor Samuel Ralston proposing the organizing meeting — and on 22 May 1915 the Association designated its system: two and sometimes three parallel north–south roads joined by a ladder of east–west connectors.

Within a week Michigan agreed to build a loop around its Lower Peninsula running by way of Toledo, South Bend, Mackinaw City and Detroit, and Detroit became the northern end of the system's eastern division, with the road through Indianapolis and South Bend as its connecting link; one Ohio newspaper of that May defined the highway whole as running "from Miami, Fla., to South Ben (sic), Ind." In South Bend the Dixie was marked on Michigan Street — south on the Michigan Road's own line — and the trails' marking was physical: a red stripe bearing white "DH" letters. The South Bend Motor Club and the Kosciusko Highway Association promoted the Lincoln and Dixie highways locally. The name outlived the trail system in exactly two Indiana places, and one of them is here: Roseland, the town at the city's north edge, names its section of present State Road 933 "Dixie Way," and local usage long called the whole south-side road Dixieway, on the logic a resident quoted to the road record: you could follow Dixieway all the way to "the South." In the numbered system the Dixie Highway's Indiana mileage became parts of State Road 933, US 31, State Roads 25, 29 and 37, US 421 and US 150.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.2010.1 annotation — the pre-Association "feeder route" name for the Indianapolis–South Bend road and the October 1914 county work (Indianapolis News, 24 October 1914); the Dixie Highway Association's organization at Chattanooga, 3 April 1915, from the Fisher–Gilbreath discussions of 1914 and Governor Ralston's proposed meeting; the 22 May 1915 designation; the Michigan Street marking in South Bend; and the South Bend Motor Club and Kosciusko Highway Association as the trails' local promoters.
2. The Dixie Highway's system record — the Michigan loop by way of Toledo, South Bend, Mackinaw City and Detroit agreed within a week of the 22 May 1915 decision, Detroit as the eastern division's northern end, and the Columbus Republican's May 1915 definition of the highway as running "from Miami, Fla., to South Ben (sic), Ind."
3. Images of America: The Dixie Highway in Indiana (Shupert-Arick & Rein, Arcadia, 2011) and the highway's route record — the red "DH" trail marking and the numbered successors in Indiana: State Road 933, US 31, State Roads 25, 29 and 37, US 421 and US 150.
4. The road record for Roseland — "Dixie Way" as the surviving name on Roseland's section of State Road 933, one of two Indiana survivals of the trail's name, and the "Dixieway" usage on the road south.