| Wake Forest Road is a contender for the most historically significant road in Wake County, alongside the likes of Hillsborough Street and Fayetteville Street.
Back before there was a Capital Boulevard (and before there was a US 401 anywhere in the county), Wake Forest Road carried US 1 north out of Raleigh. What is now the interchange of Wake Forest and Capital Boulevard began life as the split of US 1 and NC 59, which followed the route of today's US 401 north out of Raleigh. When NC 59 was expanded and US 1 was moved onto a new alignment (today's Capital Boulevard, then known as North Boulevard) in the late 1940s, Wake Forest became a short-lived US 1A north to today's Wake Forest/Capital intersection just south of I-540.
A few yeras later, in 1953, a new partial freeway was completed to connect Capital Boulevard to Dawson and McDowell streets in downtown Raleigh. Wake Forest was made discontinuous at this point, with the old road becoming private property that contains the Seaboard railroad bridge just north of Capital Boulevard.
Wake Forest south of today's Beltline interchange was widened to four and five lanes in the early '50s, and a widening north of the Beltline was completed in 1964. The intersection of Wake Forest and Falls of Neuse was moved a short distance north at this point, as Falls of Neuse was rerouted off today's Bland Road to intersect Wake Forest at today's intersection.
Wake Forest was "widened" to seven lanes in 1985, and people haven't stopped whining about it since. Originally built with five extra-wide 15-foot lanes, Wake Forest now contains two 11-foot lanes and a 10-foot left lane in each direction, plus a 9-foot center turn lane. This many lanes would typically require 84 feet of clearance, but they're shoehorned into only 75 feet. Driving along this stretch is hair-raising in light traffic, and with an extra-wide SUV or a truck thrown into the mix, it becomes a nightmare. It's a classic example of a great idea in theory that translated terribly to the real world.
At the intersection of Old Wake Forest Road and Millbrook Road is a small settlement called Millbrook, which still appears on maps of the area even though it ceased existing as a standalone entity in the 1940s. Back in the days of Old Wake Forest carrying US 1, Millbrook was halfway between downtown Raleigh and Wake Forest, and a small commercial area consisting of a bed-and-breakfast and a couple of restaurants served the crossroads (and, before the roads existed, the nearby train station). The portion of Old Wake Forest between Falls of Neuse Road and Capital Boulevard remains largely on the same route as it was when it was originally built in the 1920s.
The discontinuous portion of Old Wake Forest near Spring Forest Road is a byproduct of the extension of Atlantic Avenue in 1988. At the point where Old Wake Forest becomes Forest Oaks Drive, the old alignment turns off to the right and dead-ends on a bluff overlooking Atlantic Avenue. Otters Run Court, a minor cul-de-sac on the other side of Atlantic, also carried part of the old road, and it matched up with the dead-end portion of Old Wake Forest (crossing Spring Forest in the process) by running through what is today a shopping center.
Until the late 1980s, Old Wake Forest ended at Capital Boulevard near today's I-540/Capital interchange. It was extended a few hundred feet east to serve a pair of shopping centers, then extended again to its current end at Fox Road in 1992.
|
