EDITOR’S CORNER
As you can see from this week’s front page, downtown Rockdale is about to get the greatest, most positive, change to its appearance in a half century or longer.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is about to pull the trigger on a massive project which will include resurfacing US 79 through the downtown area and well beyond.
It’s also going to rehabilitate existing sidewalks in the heart of downtown (US 79, Scarbrough to Green) with new curbing, curb bump outs, accessible ramps and fencing, new entrances to businesses with curb and guttering and some landscaping.
It’s going to look great.
And it’s also way overdue. As a longtime Rockdale resident, I can tell you that while there have been a few changes to the highway downtown—mostly in changing the angle of parking and some lane re-striping—traffic flows through downtown pretty much as it did in the Truman Administration.
There are some exceptions, of course. Remember the signal light at the corner of Green and Cameron?
Yes, we used to have one. Travelers then negotiated stop-and-go signals for three consecutive blocks to get through Greater Metropolitan Rockdale.
Of course we didn’t then have the three other stoplights at Wilcox, Childress and Meadow.
Childress, between the highway and RHS, was a dirt road when I was in high school.
For the better part of three decades there were a series of controversies about TxDOT building a US 79 loop around Rockdale.
It didn’t happen because the highway department didn’t have money for it. I would not be surprised if it’s still in some long-range plan on some server in Austin.
But I’m not saying this to dig all that up again. I’m saying it to point out Rock-dale already has a highway loop.
US 77 used to come right through the heart of our town. It followed the route FM 487 takes today, down Ackerman to Cameron, Cameron to Wilcox and then Wilcox south out of town, although the road signs insist the direction is east.
FM 487 (and FM 1712) used to be US 77.
As a teen, I can remember a road sign not far south of the railroad overpass on Wilcox that informed drivers Corpus Christi was 212 miles way.
(Or 222 or some such number. It had a lot of 2’s in it.)
I liked that sign. It made me feel closer to the coast. But when Hurricane Carla hit us—yes, us Rockdale, it was a Category 5—in 1961, I remember thinking 200-and-whatever was too close.
Why was that sign there? I’m not sure. Seems like signs telling us the mileage to Lexington and Giddings would have been more appropriate.
But the sign went away when Rockdale got its loop. That is to say when US 77 was rerouted to the east.
We’ve gotten so used to it that many of us don’t even think of old double-sevens as a loop around town.
But it is. At a recent city council meeting the council talked about trying to get some of those blue exit signs like you see on interstates directing drivers to services such as food, gas and lodging.
It was, correctly, pointed out that travelers on US 77 don’t see Rockdale at all. Once, they went right through the heart of town.
Well, at least the spleen.
US 77 is an eastern loop with exits at FM 1712, County Road 232. CR 335, CR 333 (Belton Avenue), US 79, CR 322A (Third Street), FM 908 and FM 487.
After signs are installed, and US 79 gets gorgeous, travelers on both our highways are going be enticed to stop and stay while.
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