Dixie Highway

The Dixie Highway is a network of roads connecting eight states from Canada to Florida. The Dixie Highway Association (DHA) met for the first time in in Chattanooga, TN in 1915. Different cities and counties competed to be part of the Dixie Highway to help draw tourists to their towns. Rome competed with Dalton to have the highway; but as a compromise, the route split just south of Chattanooga and went through both towns, then merged again near Cartersville.

Every county on the route had to fund, pave and maintain its portion of the highway until July 1916 when congress passed the Federal Aid Road Act offering grants for state rural roads.  The Dixie Highway helped spur the development of “mom and pop” shops and places for travelers to stop such as gas stations, souvenir shops,  road side produce stands and other attractions. In 1926 federal and state highway officials replaced the named highways with a numbered highway system.

There are still some old roadway signs on US Highway 41 that reference the road network, but official state and federal maps do not reference the network anymore.