U.S. 1 offers intriguing alternate to interstates

U.S. 1 is a single road with many faces.

At Virginia's boundary with North Carolina, it is a quiet, country road, framed by thick woods, an abandoned gas station and a historical marker nearly hidden by weeds. If you blink, you might miss it.

Two hundred miles to the north as U.S. 1 reaches Crystal City and merges with Interstate 395 at the Potomac River, it's a fast-paced, traffic-choked, multi-lane highway surrounded by gleaming high-rises. If you blink, you might rear-end the car in front of you, bounce off a bus and wind up in a hotel lobby where you will be told check-in is not until 3 p.m.

Having surrendered the designation of most important thoroughfare on the East Coast to Interstate 95 decades ago, U.S. 1 still offers an intriguing - if not always practical - alternative to interstate highway travel.

The road stretches for almost 2,400 miles, from the Canadian border to Key West, Fla.

"It's an interesting highway," said Marge Beville, who has always lived on U.S. 1 in Brunswick County and operates the Nottoway Restaurant on the highway.

Why do we care about U.S. 1 now?

It remains a major travel artery for Virginians, though not generally the route of choice if you need to get somewhere in a hurry or if you're just passing through. A half-century ago, before the coming of the interstate highway system, it was the road to take if you were going north or south. Today, too much stop-and-go driving - there are more than 200 traffic lights from border to border, the vast majority between Richmond and Washington - makes such an excursion a painful exercise for all but the most patient of motorists.

However, when Americans first hit the roads en masse in the 1940s and 1950s, they flexed their mobility muscles by traveling highways such as U.S. 1 to see America. Route 1 doesn't have the Hollywood appeal of Route 66, the so-called Mother Road that took Americans west from Chicago to Los Angeles, but it comes from the same era and was one of the nation's busiest highways.

A move is afoot to take advantage of that history and make U.S. 1 itself a destination. The Richmond Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau is spearheading an effort aimed at "creating a tourism experience out of Route 1," said Jennifer Carnam, vice president of marketing for the organization.

"What we're trying to do with Route 1 is just make people aware of all of the historic sites and great visuals and cool, kitschy things located all along the route, from Maine to Florida," Carnam said. "Really make it an alternative to [Interstate] 95 . . . to really let visitors get out, slow down a little and experience the old road trips from years ago."

An interactive Web site is in the works and is expected to go online next spring.

Meanwhile, what's out there?

What did we find along the Virginia portion of the road? We found it's a lot easier to drive the 100 miles from Richmond to the North Carolina border than it is to drive the 100 miles from Richmond to Washington. Between congestion and construction (and traffic lights that seemed to pop up every 100 yards), it took us nearly two hours on a weekday afternoon to motor from Fredericksburg to Washington.

We came across many old-style motor courts - some still operating, some in decay and one, just south of Fredericksburg, that featured nothing more than a sign noting "vacancy" standing before an empty field.

We found Wal-Marts, antiques shops and too many used-car lots to count. There were miniature-golf courses, a scuba park (Lake Rawlings in Brunswick County) and a winery (James River Cellars in Hanover County). Convenience stores and historic markers abound.

We stopped to admire a 1949 Studebaker on display at a small-engine repair shop in Massaponax, and a sculptured, life-size crucifix in Stafford County that commemorates the first Roman Catholic settlement in Virginia in the 1600s. We encountered cornfields and rows of tobacco and new homes sprouting along the road, particularly north of Richmond.

Just south of Richmond, we found enough hubcaps and tires to outfit all of the aforementioned used cars, plus some. In that same stretch, we also saw venerable landmarks as the historic Half Way House Restaurant, dating to the 1700s, and Swift Creek Mill Theatre.

We passed poignant tributes to the Civil War (the Fredericksburg Battlefield and Pamplin Park near Petersburg) and the National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico. Stop at the entrance to the Marine base and admire the massive Iwo Jima statue.

Oh, and we ate fried chicken, barbecue and, at Beville's Nottoway Restaurant, some of the best rolls we've ever tasted.

You knew we'd find good food, didn't you?

Contact Bill Lohmann at (804) 649-6639 or .

Contact Bob Brown at (804) 649-6382 or .