17 Things You Likely Don't Know About NJ's Garden State Parkway

We either love it because we can quickly get from one place to another during the winter -- or we hate it because it takes forever to get from one place to another in the summer.

Of course, I'm talking about the Garden State Parkway.

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Origins of the Parkway can be traced all the way back to 1946 and '47 when construction began on a road that was designed to connect the bustling metropolis of North Jersey with the much more relaxing lifestyle along the Jersey Shore, all the way down to Cape May.

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Originally named the Route 4 Parkway because it was designed to bypass State Route 4, which ran up and down the shore, the first 11 miles of the Parkway (between mile markers 129 and 140) opened in 1950.

From then on, the highway continued to grow and grow and is arguably responsible for much of the development that we see today that's up and down the coastline of New Jersey.

Think of it this way: imagine life without the Parkway -- we would all be using Route 9 to get to any of the shore towns. Oof!