American Road Magazine American Road magazine Spring 2019 issue Back Issue

There’s not one kick on Route 66—not one lap at the Indy 500—not a stretch of scenic byway anywhere in the nation that doesn’t owe something to the first mile of concrete paving poured in Detroit in 1909. _ at inaugural ribbon was laid down between Six and Seven Mile Roads on Woodward Avenue, the north-south trunk line that is the focus of our lead feature, “Woodward Avenue: The One and Only King of Roads.” Woodward, without contest, has contributed more to the way we ride wheels than any other road on the globe. It was home to the first four-sided tricolored traffic light and the first moving assembly line, and it became the first eight-lane “super highway.” It has served as a test track for the big automakers, a drag strip for speed demons, and a mecca for muscle-car cruisers who attend its annual Dream Cruise by the tens of thousands. It is, quite simply, the heart of American car culture, and it has been since inventor Charles Brady King took Detroit’s first auto trip over it in 1896.

Woodward proves that the urban can be urbane. The rest of this issue plays out in that key—which, to me, sings like a vintage violin. We find the music in city settings as we showcase San Francisco’s Golden Gate, Houston’s Astrodome, and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. We tune into the way technosavvy attractions were once touted on postcards in “Future Shock!” And we revisit an engineering marvel in “Greetings from the Lincoln Tunnel: The Greatest Show Under Earth.”