A Look At The Past....The Gulf Freeway

This was received tonight in my email and I thought I would share with those fellow Houstonians that might feel the "evening rush hour". I know I do on occasion.

For all of you who don't remember what Clear Lake looked like before people!!

For those that have been intrigued by the construction of the longer than life project, I-45 commonly called the Gulf Freeway.

Not really a freeway:

This view, near the present-day El Dorado Boulevard, shows a typical section of the Gulf Freeway in July 1956.

After its official

dedication, most of the Gulf Freeway was in fact a highway without access control.

TxDOT did not purchase access rights along the highway, so frontage roads would need to be added for the entire length to Galveston to make the Gulf Freeway a true freeway.

If they waited to dedicate the highway until construction was completed - it still wouldn't be dedicated!!!

Official dedication: The official opening of the Gulf Freeway between Houston and Galveston took place on August 2, 1952. Motorcades from both Houston and Galveston met at the approximate midpoint near Dickinson for the ceremony,which was held on the FM 517 overpass. A full-sized 12-page brochure with an orange cover was distributed. The designation as a freeway was somewhat of a misnomer, however. Only an 8.5-mile (14 km) section in Houston was actually a freeway, and there were 32 at-grade crossings between Houston and Galveston.

But it just wouldn't have sounded right to call it the Gulf Highway. This traffic jam is just terrible - does not compute!! More construction....more lanes....more traffic...more congestion...hummmm Houston's first congested freeway:

By the early 1960s rush-hour traffic jams were part of everyday life on the Gulf Freeway.

This 1965 photo shows the evening rush-hour backup at the beginning of the

freeway in downtown. Researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute used

the Gulf Freeway to investigate experimental traffic