I always chuckle when I see this photo. It seems so improbable. But this road is abandoned; why not play basketball on it?
This isn’t just any abandoned road, though. It’s the old National Road, the nation’s first federally funded interstate highway, somewhere in eastern Illinois. Several long segments of abandoned brick and concrete road run alongside modern US 40 from the Indiana state line to Effingham, about 60 miles west. This concrete pavement dates to the 1920s; the road itself to the 1830s.
I love the National Road and have written extensively about it. Here’s a list of those posts.
