NC-10: The forgotten main street of North Carolina

Whenever I take a long journey by car, the route sometimes takes me off the tiresome interstate and onto more picturesque stretches of back roads. But what we call back roads today were once major transportation arteries. Before the interstate highway system, travelers didn't whiz by at 75mph staring at an endless ribbon of asphalt. They saw the main streets of big cities and small towns, farms, pastures, and woodlands. Now and then, it's nice to return to those times by exploring the back roads of North Carolina. The old highway NC-10 holds a particular fascination for me.

A bit of history is necessary here. Around 1921 or so, it was deemed necessary to assign numbers to automobile trails that previously bore proper names. The major routes that covered long paths east to west or north to south were assigned two-digit numbers ending in zero. The number 10 was given to part of the Great Central Highway, running from the mountains to the coast of North Carolina. The number was later dropped entirely from this route and reassigned elsewhere.

I frequently travel between Raleigh and Greensboro, so I'm most familiar with this piece of old NC-10. With help from a wonderful website, http://members.cox.net/ncroads/index.html, I've pieced together the original route the best I can. Follow along a Google or Yahoo satellite map as you read how a traveler would have reached Raleigh coming from Greensboro at least as early as 1921:

Follow Wendover Avenue near US-220 (Battleground Avenue). The alignment in this area changed at some point after the 1930s, so it's not possible to drive the exact original routing. Follow along on US-70 (Burlington Road). My best guess is that Old Burlington Road is where the highway originally ran, but today this hits a dead end, so you'll have to take the current alignment of US-70. Stay on US-70 through Sedalia. West of Sedalia, turn left onto NC-100. Follow it through Gibsonville. Continue on Haggard Avenue through Elon. Follow Haggard Avenue/NC-100 all the way to NC-87 and turn right. Note: the 90-degree turn probably wasn't there in 1921, so for a moment you won't be on the exact original route. Follow NC-87 into Graham, but instead of turning left to stay on NC-87, stay straight onto Elm Street and follow it as it curves left and crosses NC-54, becoming NC-49. Take NC-49 to rejoin US-70 at Haw River and turn right. Continue through Efland and Mebane and into Hillsborough, but at Hillsborough, I'm not sure whether NC-10 took a right on Hill Ave. and a left on King Street to reach today's NC-86, or a right on Revere Road (US-70A) to NC-86. Either way, follow NC-86 south past I-85, then turn left onto Old NC-10. This is a truly forgotten piece of the old highway, as US-70, which replaced the NC-10 numbering in 1927, changed routing in 1930 to bypass this area. Parts of this stretch are frozen in time in a way, taking you all the way back to the earliest days of automobiling. Even before the road was numbered, bouncy rattleboxes would putter down this same path on their way to visit far-flung relatives, attend to important business in the Capital, or perhaps attend services for loved ones who had perished in the Great War. Stay on this road as it runs into Hillsborough Road, and stay on Hillsborough Road. Yet again, the 90-degree turn wasn't there 88 years ago, but if you look at it on a satellite image, you can still see the original path that cuts through someone's front yard. When you get into Durham, turn right onto 9th Street and left on Main Street. Follow it through downtown. Turn right on Alston Ave., then left on Angier Ave. This will take you through some seedy parts, so keep your wits about you and don't go after dark. The abandoned shell of a beautiful 1920s gas station can be seen on your left when you cross Guthrie Avenue. People use it as a bus stop nowadays. Eventually you'll turn right onto Miami Blvd. Follow it past I-40 as it becomes NC-54, but where it forks right, follow the right fork onto Church Street/Old Raleigh-Durham Road/Hillsboro Road into Morrisville. Turn left on Oak Street, then right onto NC-54. Take NC-54 all the way into Cary. Be on the lookout for Durham Road, a right fork just after Academy Street. Take Durham Road and make a hard left onto Chatham Street. This becomes Hillsborough Street past I-40. Follow the signs to stay on Hillsborough Street as it takes you under the old Seaboard Air Line bridge, one of my favorite sights in Raleigh. Hillsborough Street goes all the way to the State Capitol building.

The observant viewer, when following the route on a map, will notice that old NC-10 followed the railroad rather closely. This was true for many major highways across the U.S. and enriches the sense of history that can be felt on these roads. Their ancestry extends beyond their roadbed, rooted in railroads whose paths were blazed as early as the mid-19th century. Supply trains bringing much-needed provisions and equipment to Confederate troops may have rolled by some of these roads 147 years ago.

The trip down NC-10 between Greensboro and Raleigh takes a good 3 hours! Imagine taking this route 90 years ago, bouncing around in a rattling contraption with no radio and no cell phone, with only your passengers or your imagination to entertain you. Compare that to today's route via I-40, which takes no more than 1.5 hours. The old scenic route helps you feel more of a connection to what people had to go through just to get from the Gate City to the Capital, and shows you sights you'd never see on the interstate: historic buildings, open lands, forested roads, ancient railroad bridges, and the remains of a vanished world where tired travelers in their linen suits and straw boater hats would stop at a little cafe literally on the side of the road for a hot lunch, then get a full tank and some air in their belted tires from a full-service station down the street before rattling off into the wilderness of the automobile trail.