Southern Road Names

By Tom Poland
November 22, 2013

The Good, Bad, & Ugly

We drive along giving no thought to the road we travel. And we seldom we give thought to how the road got its name. In my case, I’m often forced to learn why or how a road got its name. Generally it makes for interesting reading. Over the years I’ve profiled several highways for magazines. Some of these profiles have worked their way into books. All the roads you’ll note have numeric names: Highway 378, Highway 17 the coastal byway, and Highway 76 a road that crosses South Carolina from the Peach State to the Tarheel State.

Profile a road and you had better learn how it got its name. I don’t particularly like numerals as road names although iconic Route 66 is hard to beat. I prefer roads with names that have character and color, names like Hollywood & Vine, Bourbon Street, and Blue Ridge Parkway. Not only do good stories underlie such appellations, they teach us something about ourselves.

How and why we name roads says a lot about us. And as you’ll see we don’t always give our choices careful consideration. Would you like to live on a road with a humiliating name? Wouldn’t you prefer to live along a byway that has a connection to culture and history, something that’s a point of pride?

My road-contemplating journeys through Georgialina, my blended land of Georgia and South Carolina, consists of road trip assignments and book pieces. Now and then I’ll stumble across a great road name or intersection. Years ago I worked on an assignment for the Aiken Chamber of Commerce where I discovered an unforgettable intersection: Whiskey Road and Easy Street, one of the country’s more photographed road signs.

Down in Albany, Georgia, Lonesome and Hardup Roads make quite an interesting intersection. And over in Story, Arkansas, (I am not making this up as Davy Barry says) you’ll find Farfrompoopen Ridge … the only road that leads to Constipation Ridge. How you would like to live there!

For certain literature serves up more refined and memorable road names. Close by we have Tobacco Road. Erskine Caldwell set his 1932 novel, Tobacco Road, in the country several miles outside Augusta. Set during the worst years of the Great Depression Tobacco Road centers on a hardscrabble family of white tenant farmers, the Lesters. Like other small Southern cotton farmers the Lesters got caught in the crosshairs of major change. Industrialization robbed them of a livelihood and migrating to the city was all they had left. Otherwise they were stuck on Tobacco Road.

Any of you remember when many roads were concrete sections separated by tar? Come summer such roads turned into a tarry, sticky messes with mesmerizing mirages shimmering like standing water. I remember those roads well. I’d sit in the back seat of Dad’s Plymouth feeling the rhythm of the concrete sections beneath the wheels. Driving through rivers of tar sounded like duct tape being ripped up. A pleasant rocking would lull me to sleep but if sleep didn’t come it was fun watching the old road’s centerline wiggle, meander, and snake along. Dickey traveled such a road. James Dickey’s description of a road in Deliverance evokes memories of those days.

At an intersection we turned off onto a blacktop state road, and from that onto a badly cracked and weedy concrete highway of the old days—the thirties as nearly as I could tell—with the old splattered tar centerline wavering onward. From that we turned onto another concrete road that sagged and slewed and holed-out and bumped ahead, not worth maintaining at all.

That road by the way, based on maps, some sleuthing, and with what I know from Dickey, must have been up near the Cleveland, Clermont vicinity. Those old roads are about gone now; replaced by asphalt, which contains crude oil, a curse in many ways.

Concrete, asphalt, or dirt the fact is we have colorful road names down here. They run the gamut from the good to the bad and the ugly. Some are utterly forgettable. Some names prove memorable; some ascend to literary fame, and some are memorable because of other roads they cross. During the Clinton presidency a sign at a crossroads over this way got a lot of attention. Clinton was in one direction. Prosperity in another. It made for a chuckle or two.

And how about streets named for fruit trees. It seems we just can’t get enough of some names. Many towns in Georgia have a Peachtree Street. In Atlanta it seems half the streets in are named Peachtree. Something like 71 streets in Atlanta have a variant of Peachtree in their name … Peachtree Avenue, Peachtree Valley Road, and so forth. In South Carolina Charleston, Gilbert, Clinton, Batesburg, and Hickory Grove have Peachtree Streets.

Road names can and do change Nothing like an assassination to generate aflurry of street renaming. We name roads too because of family landconnections. Down in the Double Branches community of Lincoln County—myhomeland—Poland Road caught my daughter Beth’s attention when she was in college at Virginia Tech. I took her photo standing in front of thegreen-and-white sign. She had fun with that photo back in Blacksburg.

Here in Columbia I’m partial to Lincoln Street. I grew up in Lincoln County, Georgia, played football for Lincoln High, and most of my family, the critical mass at least, lives there. Lincoln Street … it reminds me of a previous life. (I’ve written about it before … http://tompoland.net/lincoln-street/)

 

Above Photo By Tom Poland

Some names prove unforgettable because of the sheer poetry of their name. Edisto Island’s Botany Bay Road falls into that class and if you go to my website (www.tompoland.net) you’ll see a gorgeous photo of Botany Bay Road, a classic scene from the South, photographed by Robert Clark.

Besides dust in the country, roads names can stir up controversy. A few years back a debate took wings in Terrell County down Dawson, Georgia, way over the name of a road, Chain Gang Road. The local NAACP chapter president felt the name had racial undertones. Well it was blacktopped. The commission voted 3-2 against renaming the street. The expense to residents was one reason given for keeping the name. Think of all the changes that would have required. You’d have to get a new driver’s license, new bank checks, new insurance documents, new street signs, and on and on.

The name could have been worse. Up in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, you’ll find Sewer Plant Road. Now how would you like to live on that quaint avenue? Try selling your home on Sewer Plant Road. Jack, I like your house but something about this deal stinks.

Some folks believe naming a street a fancy name such as Othello Way adds 10 percent to a home’s value. Naming streets in pricey exclusive neighborhoods isn’t done lightly. It brings up an interesting experience. Several years ago I worked on a project with a realtor. The point man in the project was a whiz. Anything he touched turned to gold. So they said. He developed an ultra-expensive development, one of those ballyhooed gated communities. Well, what to name the streets in this suburban nirvana of posh homes?

He decided to give them some French ambience. Great marketing he reasoned. A map of Bordeaux, France, inspired him. Soon his streets bore the names of wines. Imagine the elegance of giving people your chic address.

Chauncey I hear you bought a four-story home, a veritable mansion, over in Palatial Place.

Oh just a little bungalow. Cost me a pittance, Rupert. Make an appointment to see me and the missus at 14 Château Haut-Brion and we’ll partake of some Brie and Beaujolais.

Airs aside, I’ve always loved the fundamental name for road itself in French and Italian. The French use rue and the Italians use via. (How well I remember my confusion on Via Flavia in Rome one summer when I could not find my hotel.) Over here we use road, street, avenue, highway, and boulevard among other terms—all hardworking, respectable designations. It’s the local twist that makes some roads embarrassing or controversial, names such as Chain Gang Road.

Bad road names abound. Up in Traverse City, Michigan, you’ll find Psycho Path Lane. In England in South Yorkshire Butt Hole Road was renamed Archers Way by the harassed and humiliated households along its route. Up in Heather Highlands, Pennsylvania, there’s a Divorce Court.

These days when my travels bring me across a road with an unusual name I make a mental note to check it out. Such was the case with Sewer Plant Road. Ought to be a good story there I thought. Maybe I’ll write a column on how and why roads get their name. Well let’s consider that column done and as for the unfortunate folks up in Fuquay-Varina, why not get the politicos to rename the road Rejuvenation Lane. It might just make it a bit easier for them to sell their home. For sure it will look better on their checks and drivers licenses. Or they could take a page out of the realtor-developer’s book. Maybe name it Mad Dog Drive or if a bit more class is required try Boone’s Farm Boulevard. That, I’d say, ought to work. Anything beats Sewer Plant Road.

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net 
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

Tom Poland is the author of six books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press just released his book on how the blues became the shag, Save The Last Dance For Me. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.

 

---

Sign up here to receive MidlandsLife weekly email magazine.