West Jefferson, fifty years apart

[gazhekwe]

We used to drive W. Jefferson a lot in the 60s and early 70s. The tracks overhead were still in use early on. Parts of the big chase scene at the end of Detroit 9000 were filmed there. There were tracks on the road surface, too, sometimes with rail cars sitting on them. Once they took down the overhead tracks, we still used that roadway a lot as we would go to lunch at the park and watch the mail boat head out to passing freighters. There was definitely a big zigzag where the road crossed the tracks by the park at the Boulevard, sometime we got stuck there to wait for a train. The road surface got rougher and rougher, smoothing out past the Boulevard. You could drive all the way to Fort Wayne and beyond. Last time we went down there,
last summer, the road was completely blocked with no access to the park.