Delaware’s roads scholars

When David Ames looks at a road, he sees a story—a beginning and an end, connected by a plot. The plot might be based on history or architecture or culture, but the director of UD’s Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD) says it’s there, if passers-by know where and how to look for it.

Now, Ames and his student research assistants are working to help others learn to see roads in new ways that can reveal their significance. Using the National Scenic Byways Program and Delaware’s Scenic and Historic Highways Program as their starting point, the researchers are developing a guide for citizens, community groups and municipalities to research roads that they find interesting.

The goal is to encourage and enable those interested parties to obtain official designation as Scenic and Historic Highways for significant roads in Delaware. Such designation can help promote, preserve and enhance a roadway and the land alongside it.

“Our research has been focused on putting together the material in a form that local people can use to research roads in their communities,” Ames says. “We want it to be a step-by-step guide that helps people answer the question: What story does this road tell? And, it has to be a story that’s visible to travelers as they go along the road.”

Designation as a Scenic and Historic Highway must be based on one or more of six specified “intrinsic qualities,” Ames says. Those categories are scenic, historic, natural (referring to the land formations visible from the roadway), cultural, recreational and archeological.

“Roads with a primary intrinsic quality that’s scenic are what we call ‘Oh, wow!’ roads,” Ames says. “They’re conventionally beautiful, and everyone driving along them would probably agree that they’re beautiful. Some of the other types of intrinsic qualities aren’t as obvious. A road that goes through an urban, industrial area might have a fascinating history, but most travelers wouldn’t think it’s pretty.”

That’s where research comes in, Ames says, and the manual the center is developing aims to teach people how to research a road, how to evaluate its primary intrinsic quality needed for Scenic and Historic designation, how to document key aspects of the road in words and photographs and how to use standard terminology to nominate it for the designation. The process also emphasizes community input, with applicants encouraged to seek residents’ support and personal recollections about the road. “People don’t usually think of something that was built in their lifetime as historic, but a 50-year-old road could certainly qualify,” Ames says. “We take so much for granted, but once you really see something and know more about it, you have a new context.”

The project’s researchers have spent three years developing the manual, and a related Power Point presentation that can be shown to community organizations and at public meetings, under a contract from the Delaware Department of Transportation. The department manages the state’s Scenic and Historic Highways Program, which was established in 2000.

The program is Delaware’s counterpart to the National Scenic Byways Program, which the Federal Highway Administration describes as “a grass-roots collaborative effort established to help recognize, preserve and enhance selected roads throughout the United States.” Since 1992, the national program has provided funding for about 1,500 state and nationally designated byway projects in 48 states. In Delaware, two road systems—in the Brandywine and Red Clay valleys—have received official designation.

The draft version of the CHAD manual, titled Let Your Road Tell Its Story, now is being field-tested by Ames’ students, who visit various roads throughout Delaware and apply the guidelines as if they were community members starting the process from scratch. Plans are for the manual to be finalized by the end of the year.

Ames says the guide is specifically designed to be useful whether a road is in a rural or an urban area, whether it is in northern or southern Delaware and for whichever of the six intrinsic qualities is predominant.

In addition to explaining the research and application process for Scenic and Historic designation, the manual also details the next step, which is the preparation of a “corridor management plan” to enhance and preserve the road’s significance into the future. Ames says this is particularly important as development tends to take over and change the character of areas around the state.

“Sprawl is affecting everything, and it’s particularly devastating to scenic views,” Ames says. “We’re very concerned about that, especially because roads are magnets for development.”

As the researchers fine-tune the manual, they also are seeking Scenic and Historic Highway status for a specific Delaware road that has its own story to tell. The New Castle County government has contracted with CHAD to apply for the designation for Philadelphia Pike, a five-mile stretch of urban roadway that runs from Wilmington to the Delaware-Pennsylvania line and represents more than three centuries of history.

Originally known as Kings Highway, Philadelphia Pike was built in Colonial times and became part of a post road running from Boston to the Carolinas. In the early 19th Century, it became a private turnpike and then, during World War I, was bought by New Castle County and again became a public road. Ames says the researchers found that it played an important role in that war, when the nation’s railway system collapsed from overuse and truck convoys became the main method of transporting materials and supplies.

Ames says Philadelphia Pike also is historically significant because of its engineering. Delaware—thanks largely to the pioneering efforts of T. Coleman du Pont in building Du Pont Highway (U.S. Route 13) the length of the state—“was in the forefront of highway design” in the early 20th Century, Ames says. Philadelphia Pike is lined with historic properties, as well, including 18th- and 19th-Century houses and the former Phoenix Steel plant (now CitiSteel), one of the oldest still-operating steel mills in the United States.

“We’ve had community meetings where people told us about their favorite spot along the road and their memories of it,” Ames says. “Between the historic research and the interaction with the community, it’s been a very interesting project.”

—Ann Manser, AS ’73, CHEP ’73