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The first paved mile of concrete roads in the country was in Detroit. (Public domain image)
Edward N. Hines was born on January 13, 1870 in St. Louis, Missouri. Ironically, Hines’ father, a cigar maker, relocates young Edward to Detroit, where he is suddenly thrust into the heart of the American Industrial Revolution.
This revolution included the mechanization of agriculture and manufacturing and new modes of transportation. All this change called for new minds to help create a new and different way of life. Hines suddenly found himself in the right place and became an integral part of how this new society functioned in a safe and beneficial way.
Hines was an avid cyclist from an early age, and in 1890 he founded the Good Road Company in Michigan with the goal of building new and better county roads.
The efforts of this organization led to the so-called County Road Act of 1893 and an amendment to the Michigan Constitution to improve roads. In these early days of change, cycling organizations were stalwart among the pioneers calling for a better way.
This put Hines at the forefront of the battle. He became president of the Detroit Wheelmen’s Bicycle Club, he was general counsel of the American Wheelmen’s Michigan Chapter and vice president of the American Wheelmen’s League.
As the popularity of the automobile increased, the need for better roads increased. At the turn of the 20th century, existing roads were designed not for bicycles or cars, but for horses and jockeys.
Traveling on those early dirt roads was often dangerous. Hines was appointed to the new Wayne County Road Board in 1906 with Henry Ford. He served as Chairman of the Board for 32 years. In the year In 1909, Hines championed the first full mile of concrete road in the world, the section of Woodward Street between Six Mile Road and Seven Mile Road.
It was in 1911 that Hines came up with a brilliant idea that is still considered by many to this day to be one of the greatest innovations in road development and safety. It was said that there should be a line in the middle of every road to separate two-way traffic. A story told over the years, though lacking historical support, was that Hines was inspired by seeing a horse-drawn milk wagon traveling down the road.
The first painted center lines were implemented on River Street in Trenton.
With Hines’ support and encouragement, all of Wayne County’s main roads were drawn with center lines in 1922.
Hines in 2011. He was one of the founders of the Detroit Automobile Club (DAC) in 1916. DAC’s original goal was to lead the fight on the nation’s roads to better accommodate vehicular traffic.
Earlier, DAC won a major battle in its campaign for better roads when the principle of federal aid for highways was introduced. Another of Hines’ early innovations was the idea of removing heavy snow from public roads when the need arose.
Hines was a major advocate for land use highway rights of way. He had a strong belief in beautifying the highways by destroying power lines and billboards.
In the 1920s he pushed hard for land along the Huron River and Rouge River to turn the area into a park.
In the year 1937 Middle Rouge Parkway Edward N. It was renamed Hines Parkway and is now known as Hines Drive. Additionally, a 20-mile-long park surrounding the Parkway has been named Edward Hines Park.
Nature created the area known as Hines Park as the floodplain of the Middle Rouge River. This has been and will continue to be the case for centuries. But rather than let that land sit unused by anything but mosquitoes, or allow it to be swallowed up by industries in the early 1900s, Wayne County developed the land into a magnificent public park.
The idea came from Ford. After leaving the commission and deeding many of his properties to the county, the county devised a plan to use the land for a public park. Not only did it turn this area into open space, but it also moved businesses away from potentially polluting rivers, providing a natural safety valve of sorts: if the park remained a natural flood zone, nearby homes and businesses could be spared.
For decades the park served as it was intended – a recreational destination. When it flooded, it was no big deal, because people tried not to use the park when it rained anyway.
Since then, however, with the growth of the suburbs, Hines Drive [the road] It has become an extremely popular mode of transportation.
Workers commuting from Northville to Dearborn, for example, find it a way to avoid interstate freeways and stop-and-go “mile” routes. Today, more than 22,000 vehicles use Hines Drive every day, most of them to get from “point A” to “point B”. While this may be inconvenient for some, the reality is that the road remains open more than 95 percent of the time.
For his outstanding contributions to highway improvement, Hines received the George S. Bartlett received the award. In the year Although he died in 1938, his contributions were not forgotten as he was inducted into the Michigan Transportation Hall of Fame in 1972.
(Bicycle Dearborn contributed research for this article)
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