When I'm down in the minutiae of researching someone's life, it's easy to miss the bigger picture. The history around them, even though it most definitely shaped them to some degree. I have to make a conscious effort to widen the lens -- work to put meat on the bones, so to speak.
Other times, little things just jump right out. Hop in the car with me. 🚗
In May of 1930, Oscar Lee Pike, son of Alma Rosalie Lincecum Pike, was living just two doors down from his future sister-in-law, Ella Mae McGuire. Both families were in Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, and both families were residing along the Dixie Overland Highway.
The Dixie Overland Highway was conceived in 1914 by the Automobile Club of Savannah, Georgia, with the goal of charting a path through the southern States "for the purpose of connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific."
Following from the March 1917 Better Roads and Streets magazine:
An association was formed, officers elected, and a plan of operation agreed upon. The object of the association being to promote the construction and use of a highway through the States of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
...It was then developed that the Dixie Overland Highway when constructed will be the shortest, straightest, and only year round, ocean to ocean highway, in the United States. All highways east of the Mississippi and the most of those west of the river, are laid out for north and south travel. The Dixie Overland connects them all, is a trunk line through the heart of the 'black belt,' crossing the rivers at the head of navigation, and forming what the promoters believe to be the most useful and important highway in the South.
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In 1926, the American Association of State Highway Officials designated and unveiled the official description of U.S. Route 80, which largely followed the Dixie Overland Highway. The entire route was 2,726 miles, with the following being the portion through Louisiana:
Beginning at the Mississippi-Louisiana State line at Delta via Tallulah, Royville, Monroe, Ruston, Arcadia, Minden, Shreveport to the Louisiana-Texas State line east of Waskom.
Here is a present-day map of the Dixie Overland Highway / U.S. 80 through Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, where Oscar Lee Pike and Ella Mae McGuire resided in 1930.
It didn't take long for tourism to be promoted along these auto trails and highway routes. Even today, Louisiana's Historic US 80 Byway is said to be where "drivers...can drink in vistas of verdant farms and forested landscapes."
