a Detroit Post Script


In the fall of 1908 the Ford Motor Company introduced it's first car - the Model T
you all know this but what you might not know is

Woodward Avenue in the 1890s, looking north from downtown Detroit

that in 1909, the stretch of Woodward Avenue between Six Mile and Seven Mile Roads in Detorit became the first mile of road in the world to be paved with concrete.  It carrys the designation M-1 today - the first Michigan mile paved.  Detroit's main street.


Today the total length of Woodward Avenue is 21.48 miles.  It connects downtown Detroit with Pontiac to the north.  We lived closer to Pontiac than downtown but when I was in high school the thing to do on Saturday night was to cruise Woodward.  You know, I am sure that every town has a street the kids all went to be seen and to drag race on.  My dad said when he was a kid living in Detroit, they use to cruise Woodward.

Woodward in 1931, a little less crowed than I remember

Henry Ford with Thomas Edison and Harvery Firestone in Fort Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.  That's near where we live in Florida.  We go through Fort Myers to go visit my mom and dad.  Edison had a winter home there on the river.

When my grandfather was 16 he swept floors in Henry Ford's shop in Detroit.  He said that the thing that surprised him the most in his whole life, he was 96 by then, was the car.  He said never in his wildest dreams when he saw those first cars did he think they would ever swell to the sheer number there are today (he said this at least 25 years ago now) and he never imagined the roads and infrastructures that came along with the car - mind boggling - he said.


When I was growing up, he and grandma lived by the 9 mile.  That's how they said it, the 9 mile. Woodward was the road we used weekly to visit them and they us.  Just last week, my brother drove all the way to the airport on Woodward.  I was surprised to see that Grandpa's trailer park is long gone, of course so is Grandpa.

Woodward Avenue is still there.