The Historic Grand Army of the Republic Highway Bypassed Michigan

A great many well known, well traveled and historic highways cross Michigan. Consider the West Michigan Pike and Dixie Highway of yesteryear to modern interstates like I-75 and I-94.

One key historic and cross-country route, the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, skirts the Michigan State Line but never enters the state.

👇🏼BELOW: These Short, Overlooked Michigan Highways Exist Only to Leave the State + This is the Opposite End of Every National Highway That Begins in Michigan👇🏼

The highway is US 6. Its one of the nation's longest stretches of road from Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Bishop in the high California desert, the highway crosses 3199 miles of the North American continent.

The entire roadway is designated as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway. The honorific is for veterans who fought for the Union in the American Civil War.

The roadway stays just to the south of Michigan passing through Ohio and Indiana but never touching the Wolverine State.

Perhaps its fitting that, as it passes through very rural parts of Indiana and Ohio, the highway was considered, even at the heights of pre-interstate travel, as, frankly, boring. A contemporary author called US 6 a road that

runs uncertainly from nowhere to nowhere, scarcely to be followed from one end to the other, except by some devoted eccentric

Consider where it passes to the south of Michigan: Westville, Bremen, Nappanee, Kendallville and Waterloo in Indiana then Edgerton and Napoleon in Ohio.

No slight to those towns, but that's as rural as it could get.

The route's only other tangential Michigan connection is following Detroit Avenue through the Cleveland area.

This is what the G.A.R. Highway looks like as US 6 enters Ohio from Indiana:

Google Maps Street View

For a major cross-country route carrying a historic moniker, if it seems a slight to not cross into Michigan, its a slight that goes back to the dawn of the country's road network.

Get our free mobile app

These Short, Overlooked MIchigan Highways Exist Only to Leave the State

These short, stubby Michigan highways don't go anywhere other than to the state line with either Indiana, Ohio or Wisconsin.

Gallery Credit: Google Maps Street View

This is the Opposite End of Every Federal Highway That Begins in Michigan

There are 16 different federal highways (US and Interstate routes) that begin in Michigan but end elsewhere, some just a few miles across the state line some thousands of miles away. Here is the opposite end of every highway that begins in Michigan.

Filed Under: roads