Old NC 10 in Orange and Alamance Counties and an old Hillsborough bridge

Took a brief trip after work today. I just wanted to check out a former alignment of NC 10 (Central Highway), and I found a few surprises on the way.

Sometimes you have a hunch that you may find an old sign at a specific place or down a specific road. Well, I had a hunch that there may be an I-85 North Carolina shield on the roads around Exit 164 in Hillsborough. So I stopped for gas, and I played the hunch right.

Then came one of the oddest signs I have ever seen. If you exit I-85 at Exit 161 (US 70/Truck NC 86), the road there is called the I-85 Connector. (Note: Years ago this is where the US 70 expressway - the predecessor to I-85 - returned to the two lane highway west of Hillsborough).

"Tolerance Ends". Now some of you will make wisecracks about North Carolina here...but all joking aside. What the heck does Tolerance Ends mean?

The I-85 Connector ends at Dewey Rd. and West Ten Road. Turn right onto West Ten and you are on the Old Central Highway. This section has a different feel than the part that runs from Hillsborough to Durham.

West Ten Road continues on until a fork in the road. According to Dave Filpus' Old NC 10 page, at this point the oldest route of NC 10 continues on Bowman Road. West Ten Road continues straight towards Mebane.

I took the left onto Bowman Road. Just before entering Alamance County, Bowman Road has a quiet crossroads with Ben Wilson Road.

At the Alamance County Line, Bowman Road becomes Old Hillsborough Road. I would follow Old Hillsborough Road until I-40/85 (Exit 152) where I turned around and headed back.

The widening of I-40 and 85 nearly a decade ago severed Old Ten as it would head back to Hillsborough. So I took the I-85 connector to Ben Johnson Road which connects to old Ten and winds into Hillsborough. Near the center of town, Old Ten crosses under the Norfolk Southern.

This is a bit different than the three railroad overpasses on the Eastern Orange County section. What's different about this one is that one of the piers supporting the bridge is in the middle of the street.

Off of NC 86 and just south of Downtown Hillsborough is a very simple but very elegant 85 year old bridge over the Eno River. I'm fairly certain this was part of Old NC 10.

If you look closely at the photo above, there are holes straight through the pavement where you can see the ground below. I wonder if this bridge originally had a truss span on top. Otherwise it is an early concrete slab bridge.

It was a great late afternoon trip and a good way to wind down after a busy week of work. I need to go back and take some more photos and do some research in and around Hillsborough and get some more photos of the Eno River Bridge.

Futher reading:
Old NC 10 - The Central Highway
Old NC 10 ---Dave Filpus
NC 10 ---Mike Roberson

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Anonymous said…

Tolerance, in this case, refers to the extra 5 or 10% that a state trooper may allow a truck (an 18 wheeler)to be over maximum weight limitations. Tolerance is generally permitted on major highways, and in the picture with the "Tolerance Ends" sign, you can see that 86, 40, and 85 turn/exit. The sign indicates that tolerance ends at this point in the road because the highway doesn't continue straight on.

12:51 PM

Adam said…

That makes total sense...Thanks!

1:23 PM