Mile Roads' other names?

[Honky Tonk]

Like others, I agree this is debatable. Some consider Vernier another name for 8 Mile, some say it's a different road, on a different angle, and that 8 Mile has been eliminated in places but still exists in vestiges East of Vernier along its due East-West route. I fall into the latter category, but we can both be right.

I can't wait for the internet to come out so we can resolve some of these issues.


https://www.google.com/maps/place/M-...!4d-83.1189215

[mallory]

Main article: Roads and freeways in metropolitan Detroit

• Ford Road [[equivalent of 0 Mile Road, western city, suburbs)
• Warren Ave [[equivalent of 1 Mile Road, western city, suburbs)
• Joy Road [[equivalent of 2 Mile Road, western city, suburbs)
• Plymouth Road [[equivalent of 3 Mile Road, western city, suburbs)
• Schoolcraft Road [[equivalent of 4 Mile Road, western city, suburbs)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_R...tem_[[Michigan)

They might be the equivalent of the numbered mile road, but in my 55 years, I've never heard of these referred to anything other than their name. Must be a Wikipedia thing.

[Towne Cluber]

I'm a millennial, Oakland County native. It's usually 15 Mile and not Maple...

On the contrary, I’ve never heard of anyone from Oakland County refer to it as 15 Mile instead of Maple.

[pjbear05]

I've noticed over the past 10 years with speaking in person to people under 30 and from various YouTube videos from Detroit, most Detroiters under 30 are calling McNichols 6 mile rd and Fenkell 5 mile rd. Not sure why young Detroiters are switching over....

It's The Real Slim Shady's fault!

[Onthe405]

Growing up at 7 and Kelly and going to high school at 8 and Kelly, we always just called them 7 and 8 Mile respectively all the way to at least Mack. So did the Mack and 7 shopping center.

This is likely due to the contrast in the size & capacity of the thoroughfares. When 7 & 8 Mile split off into Moross & Vernier, respectively, the vast majority of traffic flow follows the latter. Since the former taper off into residential side-streets, they would rarely be used when giving directions or identifying a neighbourhood within the context of the entire metro area.

My experience with residents of the Pointes is that they refer to them almost exclusively as "Moross" and "Vernier" which is understandable, since both become increasingly low capacity, residential streets as they approach the lake. The Vernier near Eastland becomes unrecognizable just a few miles east at Jefferson.

[rb336]

Vernier is NOT 8 Mile. East 8 Mile shifts after Sprenger with Vernier carrying on the Boulevard style, while 8 Mile continues on past Harper and ends at Helen

[msamslex]

Six Mile Road is also called McNichols Road. Two Mile Road is Joy Road [[I think). Can someone give me a list of the names for the others?

Is one road chosen/designated [[and renamed) as a 'Mile Road' roughly every mile as you head [[north?) out of Downtown?

When I was a kid in the 60s, my grandparents lived in the McNichols-Puritan area & I remember relatives calling McNichols, Six Mile. I recall being a little surprised to learn Six Mile actually had a name since I’d always heard otherwise.

[mwilbert]

When I was a kid in the 60s, my grandparents lived in the McNichols-Puritan area & I remember relatives calling McNichols, Six Mile. I recall being a little surprised to learn Six Mile actually had a name since I’d always heard otherwise.

One thing about that area is that Six Mile is only McNichols in Detroit--the Highland Park side is Six Mile. So east of Log Cabin there are [[or at least were) signs that say Six Mile.

[Dexlin]

I've noticed over the past 10 years with speaking in person to people under 30 and from various YouTube videos from Detroit, most Detroiters under 30 are calling McNichols 6 mile rd and Fenkell 5 mile rd. Not sure why young Detroiters are switching over....

It's happened well before 30 years ago. I've got cousins in their 40's and 50's who've always called in 6 Mile. I never called it anything other than 6 Mile, even while we all knew it had a proper name, as that's what it's signed on the freeways and such. Might be an ethnic/cultural difference. Maybe it was more often known as McNichols prior to the 60's; I just simply never heard the name used in regular conversation.

[Meddle]

6/Mc were virtually interchangeable for as long as I can remember, but Fenkell was always Fenkell, never anything else until you hit Telegraph.

[douglasm]

I have to agree with Meddle, the names were interchangable.

I do remember in my hazy past a reference to 5 Mile Road, but I don't remember what street it was.

[eastland]

Eight Mile picks up again at Mack and then ends for good a block east at Goethe.

[Scottathew]

I grew up in Clawson [[14 Mile and Livernois) and I'll add the following:

14 Mile has no alternate name in Clawson.

Livernois is called "Main Street" or simply "Main" in Clawson and changes back to "Livernois" north of Maple Road.

Maple Road is very often called "15 Mile" or simply "15".

Big Beaver Road is often called "16 Mile" or simply "16".

My wife grew up in the farmlands and when we first started dating [[shortly after she moved to the city) I gave her directions such as "just north of 15 Mile" and she was COMPLETELY lost because I forgot that the road is not signed as "15 Mile".

Other oddities:

Many mile roads with alternate names [[Maple, Big Beaver, Wattles, Long Lake, Square Lake) change back to their numbered names as you drive from Oakland County into Macomb Country [[Dequindre Road).

8-Mile is [[part of the time) M-102, a state highway.
Livernois starts in Detroit at the river and ends in Ferndale, but then starts up again in Royal Oak but is named "Main Street" and then changes names back to "Livernois" north of Maple Road [[15 Mile) and continues until Dutton Road [[26 Mile).

Other oddities:

I live in Rochester Hills and I've found that most residents don't know what M-150 is, even though M-150 is Rochester Road north of M-59 and south of Teinken.

Many five digit addresses on north-south roads north of Campus Martius follow the scheme:

[[Address - 5000) / 2000 = Mile Road Equivalent

For example, the Walmart in Warren has an address of 29176 Van Dyke Ave.

29176 - 5000 = 24,176
24176 / 2000 = 12.088

So that means that the address is just north of 12 Mile Road, which it is. This is true of MANY 5-digit north-south addresses in Detroit and north of Detroit.



I hope y'all found that interesting!

[eastland]

There was also a movement to have "south" numbered mile roads in the Downriver but it obviously never took off.

[JBMcB]

Eight Mile picks up again at Mack and then ends for good a block east at Goethe.

That Yorktown/E 8 Mile / Overlake road spot is one of the strangest tangle of roads in the area. It's like the developer was drunk.

[Scottathew]

That Yorktown/E 8 Mile / Overlake road spot is one of the strangest tangle of roads in the area. It's like the developer was drunk.

I think it's the invisible county line between Wayne and Macomb that's causing the drunkenness.

[mtburb]

There was also a movement to have "south" numbered mile roads in the Downriver but it obviously never took off.

Speaking of which, one of these roads, Northline Road, is referred by many Wyandotte residents as that name, and is even signed as such on both sides of Fort Street and at one corner of Biddle Avenue, yet all other street signs on this road in Wyandotte call it Ford Avenue and it's even referred to as such on virtually any map.

[kathy2trips]

Moross is technically not 7 Mile Road, and Vernier is technically not 8 Mile, though they run the same way and are a continuation of the Mile roads. Why they did that is beyond me.

[MikeM]

Moross is technically not 7 Mile Road, and Vernier is technically not 8 Mile, though they run the same way and are a continuation of the Mile roads. Why they did that is beyond me.

Because they are NOT a continuation of the mile roads. Vernier and Moross were built westward from the shoreline into the swampy wilderness that was the east side. 7 and 8 Mile were extended eastward from Woodward. Eventually they ran into each other but they retained their names, as they are different roads.

[Honky Tonk]

Because they are NOT a continuation of the mile roads. Vernier and Moross were built westward from the shoreline into the swampy wilderness that was the east side. 7 and 8 Mile were extended eastward from Woodward. Eventually they ran into each other but they retained their names, as they are different roads.

I guess no one bothered looking @ the map link I posted.

[EastsideAl]

6/Mc were virtually interchangeable for as long as I can remember, but Fenkell was always Fenkell, never anything else until you hit Telegraph.

McNichols was known as Six Mile Rd. until Detroit renamed it in the 1930s for Father John McNichols, who guided the move of U of D from downtown to Six Mile & Livernois. So old-timers always called it Six Mile when I was younger.

Fenkell in the city was believe it or not named as a continuation of 12th St. [[look at really old maps of Rosedale Park), before being renamed in the 1920s for George H. Fenkell, pioneering Superintendent of the Detroit water system and Commissioner of Public Works who was responsible for the building of the city's first sewerage treatment plant and for extending the water system outwards towards the developable hinterlands. I don't think it was ever named Five Mile within the City of Detroit.

[EastsideAl]

Because they are NOT a continuation of the mile roads. Vernier and Moross were built westward from the shoreline into the swampy wilderness that was the east side. 7 and 8 Mile were extended eastward from Woodward. Eventually they ran into each other but they retained their names, as they are different roads.

I know MikeM knows this, but most of this east side confusion has to do with Detroit's overall fractured layout. With streets nearer to the river and Lake St. Clair oriented and aligned towards the shorelines of those bodies of water, as a heritage of the French ribbon farm system, and areas further out [[and indeed pretty much the entire rest of the upper midwest) oriented on the cardinal direction grid of the U.S. Public Land Survey system brought to us by the Northwest Ordinance.

But then the far east side street grid is not for the faint of heart or the easily confused, with its suddenly angling [[non-) mile roads, its east-west thoroughfares that become north-south thoroughfares at some mysterious [[grosse) point, and its 2 different major streets named Mack.

[Michael Hojnacki]

In recent years, people in their 60s and 70s have referred to McNichols as six mile to me at least. Interesting how the under 30 crowd has switched back.

[Hermod]

I know MikeM knows this, but most of this east side confusion has to do with Detroit's overall fractured layout. With streets nearer to the river and Lake St. Clair oriented and aligned towards the shorelines of those bodies of water, as a heritage of the French ribbon farm system, and areas further out [[and indeed pretty much the entire rest of the upper midwest) oriented on the cardinal direction grid of the U.S. Public Land Survey system brought to us by the Northwest Ordinance.

But then the far east side street grid is not for the faint of heart or the easily confused, with its suddenly angling [[non-) mile roads, its east-west thoroughfares that become north-south thoroughfares at some mysterious [[grosse) point, and its 2 different major streets named Mack.

Detroit streets are laid out to three different grid systems. Downtown aligns on ribbon farms oriented on the Detroit River. The east side aligns on ribbon farms oriented on Lake St Clair. Later annexations align with the Northwest Ordinance Survey grid.

[thomprod]

McNichols was known as Six Mile Rd. until Detroit renamed it in the 1930s for Father John McNichols, who guided the move of U of D from downtown to Six Mile & Livernois. So old-timers always called it Six Mile when I was younger.

Fenkell in the city was believe it or not named as a continuation of 12th St. [[look at really old maps of Rosedale Park), before being renamed in the 1920s for George H. Fenkell, pioneering Superintendent of the Detroit water system and Commissioner of Public Works who was responsible for the building of the city's first sewerage treatment plant and for extending the water system outwards towards the developable hinterlands. I don't think it was ever named Five Mile within the City of Detroit.

Thank you, EastsideAl. Great information!