DAYTON/NEWPORT/COVINGTON/CINCINNATI
Mar. 22 2016
Dayton, Newport, Covington, and Cincinnati. They go together in the good ol' U.S. of A. The Peace Bike agrees. This photo shoot has some real treats near the end, so be prepared to have your socks knocked off.
The Peace Bike is lickin' its lips, it's ready to win, and we start off in Dayton, Ky. This is uphill on Maple Avenue. According to the old speed limit sign rotting under the permacloud, the speed limit is only 15 MPH here. There's a stop sign going the other way, even though there's no intersection with a public road - though Belmont Road once met Maple on the left edge of the photo, a long, long, long, long time ago. There's still an empty right-of-way with a gate across it where Belmont was.
Downhill on Maple. Belmont would have come out at lower right. The sign is really old!
Continuing back uphill, this is the end of Maple. Until about 2007, this road continued where the concrete slabs are and went up to a small lake. Now, Grant Park Drive - the subdivision you see in the background - has replaced the lake.
"Butbutbutbut city streets aren't roads lolololol!" Vine Street in Dayton narrows as it passes the football field and becomes gravel. It used to continue a little further, past the now-abandoned basketball court.
Want to peep the new KY 9 in Newport? Want to??? This is how it stands: Here we're north on Lowell Street, and KY 9 is being built along this road. The Licking Valley Girl Scouts Bridge is overhead.
I probably had this already, but not in this state of biperoony. This is west on 6th at Brighton in Newport. KY 9 will run horizony in the background.
This outing didn't focus much on Covington, but here we're north on Greenup at 3rd. If you look closely, you can see the Roebling Suspension Bridge in the background, and the roadway to that bridge branches from the left of this intersection. But the road straight ahead here used to be KY 17 until the early 1990s, as it was the road to the bridge back then. Before the mid-1970s, it was US 25/42/127, which used the bridge in those days.
North on Vine Street in downtown Cincinnati. The sign blade for Ogden Place is one of those increasingly rare 1950s-era deals.
This is where things really get interesting! Here we're going up Nagel Alley in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine! Grass is growing through the cobblestone, but it's certainly bikeable. I love this!
Northwest on Mohawk Street approaching Manchester Avenue.
It just keeps getting better! I actually found a whole series of abandoned roads - in Over-the-Rhine, of all places! This is an abandoned part of Manchester Avenue, the former Vernon Street. You can just barely see - about halfway up - where Peck Alley used to intersect on the right. Contrary to popular belief, Peck Alley was not named after game show host Jim Peck.
Southeast on an abandoned part of Renner Street at Manchester. This is great!
And it still gets better. This is looking up where Manchester used to continue at Renner. Apparently there was once a staircase behind the old STEPS CLOSED sign at left, and you can see there was one straight ahead at center right, so the street must have been a narrow roadway straight ahead between the stairways. Supposedly it went all the way up to Klotter Avenue.
Northwest on abandoned Renner at Manchester.
Backtracking on disused Renner and looking northwest.
Southeast on Mohawk Street approaching Stonewall Street. What interested me here is the structure going over the road, between the buildings.