Back in 1985, the U.S. Department of
Transportation changed the route one of its “shield” highways, U.S. 422. Actually, it changed only a portion of one
section of the route, at its eastern terminus.
This was by no means the first such change; Route 422 had seen changes
in designation several times before.
People took notice, adjusted and then went on about their business. The opening of the final segment of the
“Pottstown Expressway” occasioned the change, and in turn became part of the
new route of Route 422. The opening of
this long-anticipated highway was a most welcome event, but almost totally
overlooked in the celebration was the enormous symbolism behind this simple
act.
An early historian of the
Philadelphia area named John Faris described the main roads out of the city as being
“fan-shaped.” They exited the city and proceeded out along the compass points from north to south (except east, of course). Two of the earliest roads to fan out from
Philadelphia to its northwest were Germantown Pike and Ridge Pike; their
origins date back to the 18th century. The former first connected a much
smaller Philadelphia to Germantown, and then gradually beyond. The latter was built out of Philadelphia
following roughly the “ridge” of the Schuylkill River’s left bank, also in fits
and starts. As settlement spread to the
northwest, so did these two roads, until they came together to cross the
Perkiomen Creek at Collegeville. From
there one road continued on as Germantown Pike to Pottstown, gradually extending the area
of Southeast Pennsylvania that could access Philadelphia. The railroads would do the heavy lifting, but
the lifeblood of local commerce flowed between Philadelphia and its
northwestern environs along Germantown Pike and Ridge Pike. They would remain the main roads in
Southeastern Pennsylvania for people to access Philadelphia until the
1960s. The opening of the Schuylkill
Expressway would begin their demise as the area’s main roads, and hasten the
decline of Philadelphia itself. The
culmination of this process was the rerouting of U.S. Route 422.
Both Germantown and Ridge Pikes never needed any validation of their
importance in Southeastern Pennsylvania, but the U.S. Government provided one
anyway when it established the first national highway system in 1926-27. In every region of the country, engineers
(and politicians) examined the local roads, and selected from them the main
ones, the ones that connected major towns and carried the most traffic. These were awarded the “shield” designation
as a U.S. highway, according to an overall numbering system. The road connection between Philadelphia and
its northwest was designated U.S. Route 422 in 1927 (Route 422 is actually
much longer, but a very complicated story).
Over the succeeding decades, substantial changes in the highway’s actual
route took place. To greatly simplify,
the shield designation was applied to both Germantown Pike and Ridge Pike for
the section between Collegeville and Philadelphia at different times, while
largely continuing on Germantown Pike from there. These changes included the highway’s
terminus in Philadelphia itself, which moved eastward in stages to the Delaware River.
The designation of these local highways as a U.S. Route was more than
symbolic. They became broader lines on
local road maps, encouraging travel on them, commercial development adjacent to
them and residential construction nearby.
All spread population and commerce along them prior to World War II. This meant that by war’s end, while both
Pikes continued to be the primary access roads to Philadelphia, local traffic
on them had greatly increased.
The explosive population growth outside of Philadelphia after the war
was initially dependent on these Pikes and their counterparts along other
points of the compass, with predictable results: traffic congestion. Strip shopping centers appeared along their
paths; their intersections with the more
significant local roads across their paths sprouted small to medium-size
shopping centers.
Then came the era of limited-access highways. Such a highway made its first appearance northwest of
Philadelphia in 1950, with the arrival of the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s Eastern
Extension in the quiet farmland of Upper Merion Township, known (only
locally, then) as King of Prussia. It
stopped there only briefly before proceeding to the Delaware River. Not long afterward came the start of a
Northeast Extension. Philadelphia
reached out to this new highway via the Schuylkill Expressway; a fundamental
motivation (although by no means the only one) for the road’s construction was
to lure traffic from the Turnpike to the city.
Roads work their will in both directions, however, and it wasn’t too
long before people realized that the net value was heading out of Philadelphia,
not into it.
An entirely new U.S. 422 between Philadelphia and Pottstown was a late entry in the road-building sweepstakes of the period. That to a degree accounts for its prolonged,
section-by-section construction over a period of twenty years. The first flush
of Interstate road-building had passed, while opposition to these highways had risen, as had
their costs. The story of this route is
a fascinating one, and I shall continue on with it in my next post. For now, however, I will jump ahead to the
date of its conclusion: 1985. This new
section of highway, built to interstate highways standards, became the new
route of U.S. Route 422.
Remember how I mentioned above that the terminus of U.S. Route 422 had
changed over the years? It did so again
in 1985, in a big way. Its previous
relocations had moved it steadily eastward within Philadelphia, until it
reached the New Jersey border. This
time, however, the terminus of U.S. Route 422 was not only moved to the west,
it was removed from Philadelphia altogether.
It now ends at its intersection with U.S. Route 202, in King of
Prussia. You can still get to
Philadelphia, but you have to take two additional roads (at least) to actually
get there.
By 1985, what had happened to Germantown Pike and Ridge Pike had happened
to the other main roads that had always connected Philadelphia to its
environs. U.S. Routes 1 and 30 still
entered the city, but they had become local roads, despite considerable
upgrading. The new main roads were the
Interstate highways, and of them only I-95 actually entered Philadelphia, and
by that date a bypass—I-476—was well underway. Not an Interstate, but built to Interstate
standards, U.S. Route 422 was merely joining the new main roads that direct
traffic to the new regional economic and social hub of Southeastern Pennsylvania: King of Prussia.
The symbolism is obvious, for it describes not just changes in a
region’s main roads, but of the region itself. For fifty-nine years, U.S. Route 422 had
connected Philadelphia to the wide swath of land—and its people—to its
northwest. The actual roads which bore
the U.S. Route designation had served that same purpose for over two
centuries. A numerical change in 1985
symbolized the much greater change that had taken place: for some two hundred fifty years, from the
early Colonial period to 1985, the main roads in Southeastern Pennsylvania
converged on Philadelphia. Now they
converge on King of Prussia.
For Southeastern Pennsylvania that pretty much sums up the last half of the 20th century, doesn't it?
For Southeastern Pennsylvania that pretty much sums up the last half of the 20th century, doesn't it?
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