During the 1950s and ’60s, the standardization of the “Super-4” highway design created a sweeping change across the Southeastern US, and as far North as Newburyport, MA. The old sections of Route One through town which were one lane in each direction became congested, slow, and occasionally dysfunctional or dangerous. They were eventually bypassed by more modern high speed 4-lane limited access highways.

Here are three small towns South of Augusta, GA. Louisville, Swainsboro and Waycross lie along the former “Cotton Belt Highway”, about 50 miles west of Savannah, as shown on the 1927 vintage road maps on Georgia. Louisville was Georgia’s third state capital, but its first “permanent” capital. Because of the city’s layout on a grid system of streets with public squares, the design is sometimes compared to William Penn’s for Philadelphia.

Drew Nugent of Philadelphia provides the gorgeous musical backdrop as we drive through each town, with a medley of songs about returning home to all of the familiar trappings. If you look hard, near the middle of town, you’ll get a feel for what Route One was like when the people who lived here may have heard these songs over the radio in the Parlor.

If you care to travel back 260 years, you can see the places where slaves were sold at the center of these towns. Cotton, that depended on slave labor back then is still grown in the fields along Route One. This is part of our heritage, despite how difficult it can be to accept or embrace.  Even William Penn, a Quaker, held slaves at his Pennsbury home near Philadelphia.