Midland Trail

It doesn't take long after I think I've made the very last posting on this blog that something else comes up. In this instance I headed out last week for a trip with stops in West Virginia and Virginia followed by a week in Atlanta. While driving from West Virginia to speak at a conference in Virginia, I started seeing freeway signs touting "Midland Trail."

I had seen "Midland Trail" on maps before I left but had pressing issues to put to bed before departure so I didn't investigate. But seeing the name on freeway signs made me take note -- and hassle with pulling out the "big" camera to snap a picture in passing, just for my records if nothing else.

Today, just returned from that trip (home at 1:30 AM PST), I got time to look up "Midland Trail" online. Of course, Midland is a popular name for towns, cities and regions -- there's even a Midland less than an hour's drive south of here. though it might just be a "district" of Tacoma.

But adding "Trail" promised something else, something historical. And so it is! Not an old pioneer trail as I had thought, such as the Oregon Trail (which ends three hours south of here), but a national auto trail, possibly the first transcontinental auto trail, ca 1913, from D.C. to L.A.

Back East Route 60 follows much of the old Midland Trail, it turns out. In a way reminiscent of Route 66, part of which I walked in Albuquerque during a conference this summer, and another part in Kingman AZ which I encountered in a break from a conference in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, and which I will see again this January.

None of which has anything to do with Midland MI other than the name Midland. Though if I'd not been a Midlander I would probably never have encountered this little bit of history.