Telegraph Road

One of the sub-sets of modern music that I enjoy is that of historical songs, or songs that reference history in neat ways. Gordon Lightfoot’s Edmund Fitzgerald is good, but his Canadian Railroad Trilogy will make the little hairs stand up on your neck. Al Stewart has some good ones, as well as The Band and others.

So I’m driving around in my SUV (168,000 miles and counting!) and listening to Dire Straits playing Telegraph Road and I look up and notice that I am driving on our very own "Old Wire Road". It runs brokenly through about 3 counties here locally and is obviously, well, old. It is the road that ran along the original telegraph route through these parts, and runs smack past a Civil War battlefield, also. The Dire Straits song is about another telegraph road, around Detroit, and the changes it brings to the generations that grow up around it. Mark Knopfler’s worn-leather voice and lyrics hauntingly capture the emptiness of blind progress, and he can also play guitar like crazy.

Some pictures and info about the road, the song and how Mr. Knopfler was inspired to write it, can be found HERE.

7 thoughts on “Telegraph Road”

  1. I love that song. Must treat myself to the live Dire Straits CD where Mark Knopfler takes that song and soars with it.

  2. I thought I was the only Dire Straits fan in San Diego County. Chula Vista has Telegraph Canyon Road.

  3. Telegraph road brings back some memories from this “old boy” who graduated from Brother Rice Detroit. I lived at Telegraph and 9 Mile and drove north to Brother Rice every day. Mile after mile of machine shops, warehouses, strip malls, fast food,…post war boom suburbia at its best.

  4. Carlo, I thought I was the only one picking up on the Telegraph reference. I was born in Southfield, MI and remember the road from my younger days. Glad to know I am not the only Yankee who reads this blog.

  5. Telegraph Road is also called “Dixie Highway.” It is one of the few exceptions to the rule that US highways and interstates having even-number endings have east-west routes. The road is notable because it is so straight making it ideal for carrying telegraph lines. It heads south (thus the dixie) to the northern Ohio, and beyond but turn more east-west.

  6. Since you referenced The Band, let me say that “Acadian Driftwood” by The Band is one of my all-time favorites.

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