We've all seen the crosses, floral tributes, candles, photos, etc., left by family and friends who lost a loved one or lost loved ones. Usually they are placed near the location of the fatality. To be more specific, I mean the traffic fatalities. I often wondered when and where this ritual started. I am not trying to be ghoulish or insensitive. But I found this article in a July 1941, New York newspaper and it may be the answer to my question.
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First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
- New_Windsor_NY
- Gold Tier
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First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
Kid: "Wish we had time to bury them fellas."
Josey Wales: "To hell with them fellas. Buzzards got to eat, same as worms."
Clint Eastwood-The Outlaw Josey Wales
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Josey Wales: "To hell with them fellas. Buzzards got to eat, same as worms."
Clint Eastwood-The Outlaw Josey Wales
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Re: First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
Everyone I've seen has been by a stop sign.
- New_Windsor_NY
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Re: First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
I've driven from Los Angeles to New York and back to Los Angeles 11 times.
I've seen these memorials on every freeway, interstate highway, parkway,
toll road, back road and yes, surface streets. It all had to start somewhere.
Kid: "Wish we had time to bury them fellas."
Josey Wales: "To hell with them fellas. Buzzards got to eat, same as worms."
Clint Eastwood-The Outlaw Josey Wales
Skip
Josey Wales: "To hell with them fellas. Buzzards got to eat, same as worms."
Clint Eastwood-The Outlaw Josey Wales
Skip
Re: First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
I don't get around as much as you do but around Hicksville here seems like the fatal memorials are at stop signs that someone ran through.
- OLDE CUTLER
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Re: First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
An interesting clipping. My brother in law was killed in a head on accident west of town here last Oct. 8. His roadside marker was just put up a couple of weeks ago.
"Sometimes even the blind chicken finds corn"
- RobesonsRme.com
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Re: First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
When I was a boy, there was a particularly dangerous S-curve on U.S. 11 and it snaked through a gap in Ruffner m
Mountain. The area was called, Saddlers Gap. I have no idea as to the origin of the name.
It was not properly banked and people drove through it too fast, as there was a certain thrill involved.
There were multiple fatal crashes there from either meeting an oncoming car or simply leaving the road and hitting the trees.
There was a white cross that read, in black, X KILLED and every time there was a fatality, they just changed the number. Last I recall was 16.
Years ago, they regraded it, improved the banking and kind of straightened it out, but not much. Also made it a four lane, so it’s better.
The cross is no longer there.
Mountain. The area was called, Saddlers Gap. I have no idea as to the origin of the name.
It was not properly banked and people drove through it too fast, as there was a certain thrill involved.
There were multiple fatal crashes there from either meeting an oncoming car or simply leaving the road and hitting the trees.
There was a white cross that read, in black, X KILLED and every time there was a fatality, they just changed the number. Last I recall was 16.
Years ago, they regraded it, improved the banking and kind of straightened it out, but not much. Also made it a four lane, so it’s better.
The cross is no longer there.
DE OPPRESSO LIBER
"...Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons ___but they are helpless against our prayers. "
Sidlow Baxter
"...Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons ___but they are helpless against our prayers. "
Sidlow Baxter
- zzyzzogeton
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Re: First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
Just west of the town I grew up in, we had a similar curve - 2 lanes, no shoulders, no banking, and a bridge over the creek right in the dead middle of the "S". I don't remember there being any crosses in the area of the S-curve, but everyone called it and referenced it as "Dead Man's Curve" because so many people had been killed in accidents there.RobesonsRme.com wrote: ↑Sat Jun 12, 2021 5:00 am
When I was a boy, there was a particularly dangerous S-curve on U.S. 11 and it snaked through a gap in Ruffner m
Mountain. The area was called, Saddlers Gap. I have no idea as to the origin of the name.
...snip....
50 years later, the road at that point is now 6 lane/4 shoulders (2 driving, 1 turn each way) with a median strip with anti-crossing wires and posts with the curve completely eradicated.
- RobesonsRme.com
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Re: First Roadway Fatality Memorial Marker?
My mother once quipped it was called Saddlers Gap because it was where so many people embarked on their journey to heaven or hell.
DE OPPRESSO LIBER
"...Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons ___but they are helpless against our prayers. "
Sidlow Baxter
"...Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons ___but they are helpless against our prayers. "
Sidlow Baxter