Submitted to the Daily Reflector April, 2007
U.S. 64, Not Your Average Highway
Special to the Daily Reflector by Fred Harrison
Traveling through North Carolina this summer? Well more than likely you’ll have need or option to take what may well be the state’s most valuable east-west route, United States Highway 64. For eastern North Carolina in particular, the development of this road has been the virtual rediscovery of a region intimately connected with the nation’s birth and almost virgin in its depth of beauty and natural resources.
Opening of this route has its beginnings going as far back as the early 1920s with a steady succession of paving projects along what was then Route 90. By mid decade a fairly unbroken path of hard-surfaced road could be had from Raleigh as far east as Williamston and Jamesville. Williamston in fact gained its distinction at this time as the eastern Carolina’s first major highway hub, Route 90 intersecting there with the rapidly developing “Ocean Highway” and later U.S. 17, the primary north-south corridor spanning southeastern United States.
About 1933 or shortly before, Route 90 became U.S. 64, though not until 1950 would its easternmost limits stretch into isolated Dare County and the North Carolina coast.
Appearing in the State Magazine in July 1951, an article entitled”U.S. 64 Short Cut to the Sea, Is Popular With Tourists” proclaimed the then recently extended route as “History’s Highway,” stating “because from Williamston to where it strikes the sea near Nags Head, it traverses so much country in which a marvelous panorama of our state’s history has been made. It is bringing to the “Lost Colony” hundreds of new visitors, who have stopped to view the interesting scenes in the vicinity of Plymouth, Creswell, Columbia, and they are pleased with the saving of 60 miles of driving between Raleigh and the seashore, with two delightful short rides on the free and state-operated new fast ferries over the Alligator River and Croatan Sound, providing a pleasant interlude in their traveling.”
Noting U.S. 64’s significance, the article goes on to state that “it is the only highway in North Carolina reaching the ocean and the only highway in the state which crosses the continent and stretches from end to end of the state at the same time. It is more than 630 miles long in North Carolina.”
In the years since bridges have replaced ferry rides and beginning in the 1980s a greater effort to four lane the route to interstate standards has gained considerable momentum. The only section of the road now remaining two lanes is from Columbia to Mann’s Harbor and an alternate 5.2 mile Croatan Sound bridge, the longest in North Carolina now bypasses the town of Manteo for a more direct entry into Nags Head.
In 1986, acclaimed author Jerry Bledsoe published From Whalebone to Hothouse: A journey Along North Carolina’s Longest Highway, U.S. 64. A travelogue of people and places from Manteo to Murphy, the book reflects the late 20th Century character of the road as depicted from the personal stories of those living along its winding path. In eastern Carolina to name a few, there is the story of R.B. Nelson of Robersonville, North Carolina’s only officially designated “Highway Promoter” and a touching interview with Eula Mae Williams, a woman living in a small shotgun house east of Bethel.
Visit Joyner Library’s North Carolina Collection to learn more about North Carolina highway history and development. In addition to currently published thoroughfare plans and road improvement reports, the collection contains an impressive array of early state documents, statistical tracts and printed photos dating back to the early teens and twenties, chronicling all state and local highway projects.
The collection is located on the third floor of Joyner Library. Call (252) 328-6601 or visit the website at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/index.cfm for further information.
Fred Harrison is a staff member with the North Carolina Collection.
