Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Dallas, Texas


This is one scary looking expressway! It seems like there would have been a lot of on and off merging collisions. What's really amusing is that if you want detailed information about the freeways of Texas, there is a website just for you: http://www.texasfreeway.com.  Freeway nerds unite! Unfortunately, this express highway doesn't qualify as a freeway (those came later), so you can't get the history on this one on that website. There are lots of maps and photos of other freeways though and some history back to the 50's. But I would really like to know more about this expressway and how long it "worked" and what they did next (uh-oh, I may be a nerd.)
There appear to be be lots of trees and residential areas on either side of the expressway, so can we assume the entire expressway swath was also housing and trees that had to be cleared? I don't know the answer. The September 19, 1949 issue of Life magazine carried an article about the opening of the first two miles of the 11-mile expressway, saying that it was opened to the "blare of bands and the joy of its citizens, and that it would speed motorists out of the city's heart at 50 mph."

Love Field was the main airport for Dallas until 1974, the year that the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport opened. This is the airport of my dreams; it looks like you could park right next to the terminal and walk to the tarmac. That's very exciting. It also appears that you could stand outside and watch the planes land and take off from the second-story balcony.  I would be so happy, I wouldn't even care if I had to drive there on that scary expressway. Dallas Love Field still operates as a secondary airport for Dallas.

4 comments:

  1. Wow! I guess it is true that they do everything bigger in Texas!

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  2. looks like a cool highway -- reminds me of arteries & veins, haha..

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  3. I've been there, maybe on that freeway. Thankfully. I didn't have to drive when going into actual Dallas.

    DFW airport might not be so bad according to your criteria. I've been there 2 or 3 times, and on of them I had to leave it. I got out of the airport and into the car so quickly I barely remembered it. It's nothing like the Denver airport, badly designed and it takes forever to get around in it.

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  4. Wow, that Love Field card is great. I never flew out of there, but I remember going there as a kid when we'd pick up visiting relatives. I even have home movie footage of my mother and my sister boarding a plane (a prop plane) as we stood behind a chain link fence waving... only about 50 feet away! Those roll-away stairs used for boarding were too cool.

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