Grand Rapids Was Once ‘Detour City’ – Do You Remember Those Heavy Construction Days?

For a frustrating time in the early 1990s Grand Rapids was once known as Detour City. Grand Rapids has had longstanding nicknames like the Furniture City and Beer City. But Detour City?

The name was a moniker bestowed upon the downtown area by the Grand Rapids Press in the summer of 1990.

👇🏼BELOW: Every Interstate Highway in Michigan Has Quirks - Here They Are👇🏼

The Detour City nickname was earned thanks to a massive construction project on the interstate that cuts through downtown, I-196. The Ford Freeway's bridge over the Grand River was slated for rehabilitation. The project closed the westbound expressway and several on-ramps completely.

A Press article explaining the closure and shared to the Grand Rapids Informed Facebook group ran with the headline 'Summertime is Bummertime for Detour City.'

READ MORE: Visitors to Michigan Can't Fathom How Fast Freeway Speeds Are in Downtown Grand Rapids

The freeway saw onramp closures at Fuller, College and Ionia Avenues. Traffic had to exit westbound I-196 at Ottawa Ave and use Michigan/Bridge Streets to Lane to reenter or turn either north on Scribner or south on Mount Vernon for access to US 131.

This project, which lasted for two months, was in the days before M-6 so there was no southern bypass that could be used to avoid the closure. It was the interstate traffic on surface streets in the downtown corridor which sounds like a traffic nightmare and worthy of the Detour City nickname.

But construction projects, as they always do, wrap up and so with it went the Detour City nickname for Grand Rapids. That leaves the only DeTour community in Michigan as DeTour Village in the far eastern tip of the Upper Peninsula.