The Cloverleaf
by Paula Bosse
Behold... (via TxDOT)
by Paula Bosse
I have such a weird fondness for the old Central Expressway/Northwest Highway cloverleaf interchange, at NorthPark. In fact, I kind of forget it’s not there anymore. I have fairly scary memories of my mother driving like a bat out of hell on it. I’m pretty sure the car was tipped at an angle on two tires as we rounded those curves. And I remember being behind the wheel myself when I was a new driver, white-knuckling it until I hit the straight-away. Strange that I have such fond memories of it, because a lot of those memories were kind of terrifying! I guess it has to be the design. It was cool. COOL! The photo above is just great. The view is to the south from Northwest Highway, across open Caruth farmland. Mid-’50s. Pre-NorthPark. Pre-people. Pre-traffic.
Below, after NorthPark’s arrival (photo from Oct. 1967):
Here’s an interesting photo I stumbled across in an issue of SMU’s Daily Campus newspaper from 1951 — a personal-size cloverleaf:
SMU Daily Campus, May 5, 1951
I really miss the Northwest Highway cloverleaf. I think about it almost every time I drive past NorthPark on Central. Shoulda kept it, Dallas.
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Sources & Notes
The top two photos are from the book Dallas-Fort Worth Freeways by Oscar Slotboom (top photo from TxDOT, second photo from UTA Libraries, Special Collections).
This post appeared in a slightly different form on the Flashback Dallas Patreon page.
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Copyright © 2024 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
Hi Paula – Mac McGinnis here. For sure it is looking south, with Greenville Ave off to the left, but where is the Caruth Home Place? seems to me it should be visible off to the right, but possibly it’s just out of the picture, to the west,
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I think it’s just out of frame.
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Its to the south.
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I think the first street south of NW Hwy in that picture must be Caruth Haven (as it’s called now). I really don’t remember, but I have a feeling that although there was an overpass, the public street didn’t continue on to the west of Central, just a big locked gate there. If that’s the case then the north-south “street” running across the open field would be what’s now “Cornerstone” but it would have just been an entrance drive to the Caruth homeplace, which would be just off the picture to the right, about 1/4 of the way down from the top of the picture.
The next street crossing over would be Southwestern, and the third one, last visible, would be Lovers Lane.
You can just barely see, below the top edge, on the left side, the center where Louann’s was, on the SE corner of Lovers and Greenville (Central market now). That’s where Greenville makes a bend to the NNE.
Cutting across the upper left corner of the photo you can see the Interurban tracks. I expect the actual tracks had been taken up but the ROW is still very visible.
I remember very well that for years and years that space outlined by Central, Northwest, Southwestern, and Boedeker remained undeveloped.
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I remember those from the 50s… my mom once told us how many degrees we went through on one of those turns… then I would ask her every time we took an exit “how many degrees was that?”. My first introduction to that concept.
Also when we were driving on Central under the crossovers, my mom would sing a little song “Down UN DER and upagain”… which was kind of a game.
We didn’t usually go downtown that way, especially after I35 was available, but if we had to go to Highland Park for a doctor visit, or other business, we would go that way… or to the Farmers Market.
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I love that families have their own little traditions regarding reactions to local landmarks.
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I’m having trouble identifying the streets that cross Central.
NW Hwy is obvious, the next one I think should be Southwestern, but I don’t think either of the next two should be Lovers Lane; I thought Lovers crossed Central long before this picture would have been taken.
I do remember Lovers being a narrow country lane (Pre-Old Town, Pre-Village Apartments), but I don’t see anything that looks like that running east from NW Hwy except possibly that first street south of Northwest – and that’s too close to be Lovers Ln. I think.
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[…] car was spent hurtling around this cloverleaf, fearing for my very life. I really miss it! From “The Cloverleaf.” (Source: […]
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[…] “THE CLOVERLEAF” […]
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