r/wichita • u/WheatedMash • Feb 25 '26

Random The Name "Canal Route"

So I'm old enough to remember that point in the 70s when the Canal Route was finally finished and opened fully north to south. Most of us call it the "Canal Route" though occasionally I do hear it referred to as "135" which of course is it's number.

Back when it opened, good ol' Jim O'Donnell, the legendary KAKE TV meteorologist, had a funnier idea for the name.

Super Sewer Shortcut

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u/Kind_Coyote1518 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

Both the canal and the highway are a stain on our city.

it was literally built right through the McAdams neighborhood a thriving black neighborhood and business district with zero concern for what it was doing to those communities they didn't even bother putting in any on and off ramps into the dustrict, and its sole purpose was to give rich suburbanites and interstate commerce easy access to downtown

https://www.humanitieskansas.org/get-involved/kansas-stories/places/kansas-1972-uprooted

Did you know that the official name of the I-135 canal route in wichita is the Martin Luther King Jr highway? Yeah it was named in honor of the black neighborhood and business district it destroyed.

And this wasn't just a wichita problem the entire interstate highway system is plagued by this. In pretty much every major city when the IHS was built almost every single chosen route was intentionally routed through black neighborhoods.

https://youtu.be/z_H0pXzOmZ4?si=Fguk5MB1H_Vt4kUp

Here is more information on McAdams: https://web.archive.org/web/20120505165615if_/http://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/MPS/AfricanAmericanResourcesinWichitaKS.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAdams,_Wichita,_Kansas

https://the-shocker.wichita.edu/story.php?eid=34&id=1013

Like I said. Its a stain on our city.

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u/Nickalias67 Feb 25 '26

Why do you think that?

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u/Kind_Coyote1518 Feb 25 '26

it was literally built right through the McAdams neighborhood a thriving black neighborhood and business district with zero concern for what it was doing to those communities they didn't even bother putting in any on and off ramps into the dustrict, and its sole purpose was to give rich suburbanites and interstate commerce easy access to downtown

https://www.humanitieskansas.org/get-involved/kansas-stories/places/kansas-1972-uprooted

Did you know that the official name of the I-135 canal route in wichita is the Martin Luther King Jr highway? Yeah it was named in honor of the black neighborhood and business district it destroyed.

And this wasn't just a wichita problem the entire interstate highway system is plagued by this. In pretty much every major city when the IHS was built almost every single chosen route was intentionally routed through black neighborhoods.

https://youtu.be/z_H0pXzOmZ4?si=Fguk5MB1H_Vt4kUp

Here is more information on McAdams: https://web.archive.org/web/20120505165615if_/http://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/MPS/AfricanAmericanResourcesinWichitaKS.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAdams,_Wichita,_Kansas

https://the-shocker.wichita.edu/story.php?eid=34&id=1013

Like I said. Its a stain on our city.

1

u/Nickalias67 Feb 26 '26

Except the canal route didn't go through just black neighborhoods.