Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
October 7, 1834 The completion of Pennsylvania’s first state-owned railroad was celebrated with an inaugural journey of two train cars on the entire route, which covered 82 miles (132 kilometers) between the borough of Columbia and the city of Philadelphia. Those train cars were pulled along by steam locomotives respectively named Columbia and Lancaster. ... Continue Reading →
October 2, 2018 In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, a girder bridge in the city of Saskatoon. This bridge, which crosses the South Saskatchewan River, carries six lanes of McOrmond Drive and two multi-use paths. Originally called the North Commuter Parkway Bridge prior to its completion, this structure was renamed after a local 19th century... Continue Reading →
The formal efforts to develop what became the U.S. Numbered Highway System began at the annual 1924 meeting of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) in San Francisco. It was at this venue that the association approved a resolution called on the U.S. secretary of Agriculture (USDA was the “umbrella” department for the... Continue Reading →
September 28, 1969 Operations began for an extension of the Chicago “L” rapid transit system serving the Windy City and a few of its surrounding suburbs within Cook County, Illinois. (The “L” stands for “elevated.”) The newly completed extension was named after Dan Ryan (1894-1961), who served as a member of the Cook County Board... Continue Reading →
September 25, 2009 After three months of construction, a train station in the central part of Washington State was officially opened. Icicle Station is located just one mile (1.6 kilometers) northeast of the downtown area of the city of Leavenworth. This station is served by the Amtrak-operated Empire Builder, a daily long-distance passenger train that... Continue Reading →
In the years since it became one of the original routes of the U.S. Numbered Highway System, U.S. Route 66 (US 66) has left an enduring and unrivaled cultural imprint. Journalist and historian Michael Wallis (born in 1945) summarized this legacy in his 1990 best-selling book Route 66: The Mother Road. “Route 66,” Wallis noted... Continue Reading →
On June 18, 1925, the sixth of the regional meetings of the Joint Board on Interstate Highways was held in Boston for the New England states. The specific location for this gathering was the boardroom of the Massachusetts Department of Public Works in the Massachusetts State House. This building, which was constructed during the 1790s,... Continue Reading →
September 14, 2009 Fair Park station became one of the four original stops of the Green Line of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), an agency serving the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex of Texas, to be opened to the public. Fair Park station is in the South Dallas neighborhood of the Lone Star State city famously... Continue Reading →
The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 individuals in the vicinity of the World Trade Center in the southernmost part of New York City’s borough of Manhattan; the Pentagon in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area; and – where a hijacked airplane went down after... Continue Reading →
September 10, 2010 A major milestone for bicycling in the Washington, DC., area took place when Capital Bikeshare (abbreviated as CaBi) made its formal debut. At the time, this system had a grand total of 400 bicycles at 49 stations. Ashley Halsey III vividly described the launch of CaBi in the next day’s edition of... Continue Reading →
