Memorial Drive is an arterial road in the western half of

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Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It runs from

Interstate 45 Interstate 45 (I-45) is a major Interstate Highway located entirely within the US state of Texas. While most Interstate routes which have numbers ending in "5" are cross-country north–south routes, I-45 is comparatively short, with the ...

west to State Highway 6, a distance of approximately 20 miles (32 km). A section goes through several predominantly higher-income residential neighborhoods in the cities of

Bunker Hill Village Bunker Hill Village is a city in Harris County, Texas, United States, part of metropolitan area. The population was 3,822 at the 2020 census. It is part of a collection of upscale residential communities in west Houston known as the Memorial V ...

Piney Point Village Piney Point Village is a city in Harris County, Texas, United States. The population was 3,125 at the 2010 census. Piney Point Village is the wealthiest place in Texas, as ranked by per capita income. It is part of a collection of upscale resident ...

, and

Hunters Creek Village Hunters Creek Village is a city in Harris County, Texas, United States, part of the metropolitan area. The population was 4,385 at the 2020 census. It is part of a collection of upscale residential communities in west Houston known as the Memor ...

, in addition to Memorial Park. Memorial Drive was named in the memory of the men who served in Camp Logan.

History

Memorial Drive was established in the 1920s. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Memorial Drive was originally intended to be one of ten

freeway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms ...

spokes extending outward from

Downtown Houston Downtown is the largest central business district in the city of Houston and the largest in the state of Texas, located near the geographic center of the metropolitan area at the confluence of Interstate 10, Interstate 45, and Interstate 69. The ...

. Despite the explosive population growth in the Houston area in recent decades, the heaviest traffic on Memorial Drive was in the early 1960s. Nearly 47,000 vehicles per day traveled on the section at Waugh Drive in 1960. When the Katy Freeway opened in 1968, the road's importance as a high-speed corridor decreased.Ch. 4-Spokes
. ''Houston Freeways'', Erik Slotboom. In contrast to its earlier days, between 30,000 and 36,000 vehicles per day traveled along this section in 2001. Houston City Council member Pam Holm announced in May 2007 that a large portion, roughly one fourth of the Memorial's length, will be expanded and beautified. The stretch of road from George Bush Park eastward to Gessner Road, about 6.2 miles (9.9 km), will be renovated to meet the population boom in the west Houston area. The first part of the expansion was slated to begin in 2009.

Path

Parkway section

This limited-access portion of Memorial Drive was opened to traffic in early 1956. The 2.3 mile (3.7 km) portion between Houston Avenue and Shepherd Drive is a limited-access parkway. There is an

underpass A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube constr ...

at Heights Boulevard/Waugh Drive with a large cloverleaf interchange. There are also exit and entrance ramps at Shepherd Drive. Motorists can enter Memorial Drive from northbound (by way of the I-45 northbound/Pease Street

distributor A distributor is an enclosed rotating switch used in spark-ignition internal combustion engines that have mechanically timed ignition. The distributor's main function is to route high voltage current from the ignition coil to the spark plug ...

ramp) or southbound Houston Avenue, Prairie Street, and Capitol Street. Motorists exit either to I-45 southbound and Pierce, Jefferson and Bagby Streets (by way of the Heiner Street

elevated ramp), Rusk Street, or Texas Avenue. Most of this parkway is three lanes in each direction. This section of Memorial Drive hugs the north bank of Buffalo Bayou, crossing over it twice near Glenwood Cemetery, while Allen Parkway follows the south bank of the Bayou. There are continuous bike paths and jogging trails along the road, which passes by Buffalo Bayou Park, Cleveland Park, Spotts Park, and the Houston Police Officers' Memorial.

Memorial Park

Memorial Drive is the only major road in Memorial Park (except for a short section of Woodway Drive) and the only road that traverses the entire park. Like the parkway section, there are many bicycle and jogging trails along the road. The annual

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Houston Marathon is held on this section of Memorial Drive each January.

Memorial Villages

After passing under Interstate 610, the road slowly winds north, through wooded but densely populated neighborhoods. The road later turns south through three of the Memorial Villages:

, and then

. The Memorial Villages are upscale neighborhoods, populated mainly by corporate executives, and feature some of the more expensive homes in the Houston area. For all but the westernmost edge of Bunker Hill Village, the road is only two lanes wide. Between Gessner Road and State Highway 6, Memorial Drive has four lanes.

West end

West of Beltway 8, Memorial Drive is considered a major road in the area, making its way through numerous residential neighborhoods on the westside and usually bordered by retail shops and strip malls, many of them serving the surrounding higher-income residential population. The upscale shopping center Town & Country Village borders this segment. This segment also passes through the northern portion of the

Energy Corridor The Energy Corridor is a business district in Houston, Texas, located on the west side of the metropolitan area between Beltway 8 and the Grand Parkway. The district straddles a stretch of Interstate 10 (the Katy Freeway) from Kirkwood Road west ...

management district. The western end of Memorial Drive is at Highway 6, at the edge of a large earthen dam on Barker Reservoir,Satellite image and map of western terminus of Memorial Drive
Google maps. Retrieved November 26, 2006. next to George Bush Park.

References

{{coord missing, Texas Roads in Houston