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ft STAFF REPORT CONCERNING US 31 ROAD IMPROVEMENT IMPACT ON HISTORIC STRUCTURES AND LANDSCAPES HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION OF SOUTH BEND & ST. JOSEPH COUNTY Date: 06-30-03 INTRODUCTION Highways, expressways, and freeways crisscross this country. This breed of high-speed, limited access road systems has existed since the late 1950s when the federal government under Eisenhower passed the 1956 Federal Highway Act. This act established initiatives for the planning and funding of more efficient and expansive expressways. It was hoped that these new freeways would solve the car saturation problem on the nation's road and national security fears of the Cold War era. The freeways and expressways that have theirs roots in the work of many Congressmen and Senators who worked on Capitol Hill in the 1950s have truly become entrenched in modem American society. These roads are used daily by millions of Americans who drive upon them to commute to work and then home again, to places of entertainment on the weekends, or even across the country on vacations. Without traffic and congestion, these roads can provide an almost surreal ease while driving, but during rush hour, they produce nightmares of brake lights and toxic fumes. People spend countless hours of their lives sitting in rush-hour traffic upon many of the nation's highways. Issues such as road rage have now become the subject of news articles and grace the covers of national magazines. Yet, for those who own cars, everyday life often seems infeasible and impossible without highways. These roadways have also had an enormous impact upon the American landscape., One scholar has argued that the construction of highways over the past forty to fifty years has been one of the most prominent forces of change that has molded the American cityscape and country-scape. In addition to linking towns and cities, freeways have divided urban neighborhoods, cut through farmland and broken through mountains. Not only is a freeway a strip of roadway serving utilitarian purposes, it is a mark upon the land that affects how a person sees and understands a nearby area or even a region. Add together all the miles of pavement that connect this country and one finds a substantial area directly impacted and shaped by ribbons of asphalt and concrete, looping access ramps and freeway bridges. Yet, the area directly covered is miniscule in comparison to the area that will actually feel the economic, social and environmental forces at work with the construction of a freeway. Noise, more traffic, wider roads, rest stations, new development at exits, and the division of property for construction all come with a freeway. Scholars have recently explored the recent creation of edge cities, places located near freeway exits that are mainly filled with office and retail space but devoid of actual housing. These edge cities now serve as the commercial centers of counties and towns where the downtowns had once existed as vibrant multi -use places filled with workspaces, play spaces, homes, and retail. As freeways weave across the country following no particular pattern and seemingly dodging some places while directly connecting to others, all the changes wrought by highways have occurred without prediction. With the coming construction of a new US 31, vast changes to the landscape in southern St. Joseph County are real possibilities. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE/HISTORIC CONTEXT, US 31 has a long history as a route for human travel, one that predates the proposal and naming of the federal road in 1926. Portions of the road may follow routes that Native American tribes had used for centuries prior to European pioneering excursions and settlement. It is possible that this trail was used by,