Telegraph Road

A colorful tree on Telegraph Road.

Telegraph Road (US24) runs parallel to Dixie Highway up in our neck of the woods. Further south in Toledo, Telegraph Road ends where it meets Dixie Highway at Laskey Road. US24 continues on as Detroit Avenue until it dead ends into River Road in Maumee, Ohio. If you follow the twisty turny path to cross the bridge from Maumee to Perrysburg, you can pick up another road called Dixie Highway that is US25. Where US25 goes from there is hard to follow. According the U.S. Highways historical web site it goes all the way to Brunswick, Georgia.

Why all this fascination with a physical description of a mythical road? It's like wondering where names come from, or local dialects, religious rituals, architecture and other aspects of a culture. It's so intanglible, because it's always changing. You want to be able to put your hands around it and say, "Aha, there it is!" It's hard to imagine that before the 1920's these roads didn't even exist. Since then, American culture has become deeply entrenched with things that have to do with cars. The automobile and the open road are symbols of freedom and that is what elevates them to the status of myth or legend. People write songs and tell stories about such things.