SAUGUS — If you have traveled through the North Shore, chances are you have driven your fair share of miles along Route 1. However, Laurie Eisener, president of the town’s historical society, recently showed how much the highway has changed over the decades.
Her presentation began with a photo of a dirt road lined with telephone poles, consisting of a single lane. Believe it or not, that road was Route 1 in its early days.
“Before it was paved for many, many decades, it was a dirt road… It opened as the Newburyport Turnpike on Feb. 11, 1805, and it was privately built,” Eisener said.
The road originally had tolls, with separate prices for pedestrians as well as carts hauled by horses and oxen.
“The tolls were collected until about 1847,” she said. Eisener explained that when the railroad opened nearby, people realized it was much cheaper to travel by train, which led to the decline of toll revenues.
The road was eventually paved in the 1920s and widened to accommodate the growing number of cars on the road each day.
Eisener shared images illustrating the changes in traffic on Route 1, from a few distant cars to the well-known bumper-to-bumper congestion of today. She also described how students crossed the highway to get to school.
“People have told me they actually remember when school kids would go to school, they would push a button so that lights would turn (red), and they would walk across. One of my best friends lived in North Saugus, and there was a traffic light near Walnut Street… that’s what she did her first few years (going to school),” she said.
She then displayed a photo of an old gas station, explaining that such stations were once family-owned. One example was Gibbs Gas Station, owned and operated by the prominent Gibbs family of Saugus.
“Peggy Gibbs, who made a substantial donation to the historical society decades ago, was a member and became famous around town because she decided to open up a lunch counter at her husband’s gas station,” she said.
Gibbs got this idea from watching traffic crawl along Route 1. She employed women whose children were in school, opening the counter at the start of the school day and closing just before dismissal.
The audience chuckled at a quote from William Callahan of the State Department of Public Works, who served from 1952 to 1964, calling Route 1 “the most modern road in the world,” specifically the Saugus section.
Writer Paul Haley also wrote, “No one should miss this beautiful stretch of highway in Saugus. Along it is to be seen some of the most beautiful scenery in the entire United States.”
During her talk, Eisener also highlighted well-known buildings such as The Ship, Spinelli’s, and Gould’s Flowers, all of which hold deep history in the town. Spinelli’s remains open today.
“People are likely pretty sentimental about those ship masts on the highway,” she said. “I used to look at them when I was sort of illegally ice skating as a teenager on Walden Pond because over the treetops, you could see those 19th-century ship masts, and I’d like to think that we were skating on a river, and that was a boat on the river.”
Eisener continued scrolling through photos of businesses, many of which are long gone. Each image sparked reactions from the audience, with attendees sharing fond memories.
Another fond memory was of Godfried’s Bakery and Deli, now Godfried’s Plaza.
“I worked at Godfried’s in high school for quite a few years… The years that I worked there, along with my best friend, and her mother had worked there for a decade or two before that,” she said.
This building is one of the prime examples of the constant change of Route 1, having transitioned from Godfried’s to Boston Market, to Chick N’ More (which opened in May 2024), and now Istanbul Diner.
With each photo and new topic, nostalgia filled the room. Eisener captivated the audience, many of whom had witnessed these changes from childhood to the present, making the ongoing transition of Route 1 a major part of their lives.
