Ottawa County, Oklahoma, is proceeding with a preservation plan for the nearly century-old stretch of Route 66, also known as the Ribbon Road or Sidewalk Highway, that may include a cycling or pedestrian trail next to it.
KSN/KODE-TV reported:
It will feature a walking, biking, and hiking trail alongside the historic Mother Road.
Ottawa County Commissioner, Russell Earls, says they are working on a conceptual design to be complete in 2020 and break ground in 2021.
City leaders are partnering with the National Parks Services for this project to help provide funding.
Here’s the video report from the station:
The design, if enacted, would be finished in eight years.
Rhys Martin, president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association, commented on a Facebook thread about the news:
The trick is figuring out a way to restore the road so it looks like it did back in the day, but also ensuring that the existing farm/machinery traffic still has a place to go. One solution to that is expanding one side of the existing road area to create a gravel lane for that traffic while keeping the original sidewalk highway for tourist and alternative traffic.
There are several proposals being tossed around, nothing has been finalized as far as I know.
The 9-feet-wide Sidewalk Highway exists in a seven- to eight-mile stretch south of Miami, Oklahoma, and ends near Afton, Oklahoma. Because it runs through the middle of a rural area, it truly gives a feeling of a long-ago era.
It was built in 1922. It’s narrow because local officials wanted to pave more miles of road with the limited dollars they had. The road predated Route 66 as a part of the Ozark Trail.
Much of the Sidewalk Highway is covered with gravel to fill potholes and washboarded sections. The gravel also keeps the original road surface underneath from deteriorating faster, but it’s not particularly attractive.
The Sidewalk Highway was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.
(Image of the Sidewalk Highway in 2007 near Miami, Oklahoma, by gsamx via Flickr)