By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
It would not be a stretch to say that Route 206, which wends its way from the sandy soil of Atlantic County to the woodsy hills of Sussex County, has suffered from an identity crisis.
Most of the way it is known as the Disabled American Veterans Highway or just plain old Route 206. It becomes Stockton Street and Bayard Lane in Princeton, and Lawrence Road, Lawrenceville Road, Main Street and Princeton-Lawrenceville Road as it passes through Lawrence.
Sunday afternoon, Lawrence Township Historian Dennis Waters will fill in the rest of the names for Route 206 as well as the 130-mile-long road’s history at the Lawrence Historical Society’s annual meeting at 2 p.m. at the Lawrence High School Commons.
The meeting is free and open to the public. It will close with a celebration of Lawrence Township’s 315th birthday, accompanied by a cake. The township was founded as Maidenhead Township on Feb. 20, 1697.
Meanwhile, Mr. Waters said he will tell the story of Route 206 and how it emerged. Going back to the beginning, he said, there were many trails established by the Native Americans including what is now Route 206 as it passes through Lawrence.
”It has been such an important road for so many years, and so central to the culture of Lawrence Township unlike Route 1 or I-95,” Mr. Waters said. “As I started to dig into (the history of Route 206), the more and more interesting it became.”
”It started as a Native American trail and it became, in relative terms, a major Colonial road. We have had essentially anyone who was anyone, and who was traveling from Philadelphia to New York City, come through (Lawrence). You would be hard pressed to find a Colonial road that was more important than this one,” Mr. Waters said, whose history spans 400 years.
Mr. Waters pointed out that during the Revolutionary War, the French, American, British and Hessian armies marched up and down the King’s Highway/Route 206 including Col. Edward Hand, whose Pennsylvania riflemen held the British and Hessians at bay in January 1777 as they were in hot pursuit of Gen. George Washington.
Later on, portions of Route 206 were incorporated into the Lincoln Highway, he said. The Lincoln Highway was intended to become a major east-west highway, connecting New York City and San Francisco, when it was proposed in 1913.
”The Lincoln Highway was important symbolically. It focused on long-distance travel. People who traveled that road were quite intrepid. It was never built as a highway in the modern sense. There was no federal money (available),” Mr. Waters said.
Nevertheless, Route 206 was one of the first truly paved roads in New Jersey in the 1920s, he said. New Jersey was one of the leaders in road development in the early automotive age, he said, adding that it was the first state to provide money for road construction.
”And Route 206 was part of it. The road has had many names over the years, about 20 or so. Even today, it is known by 10 or 12 names and we will have all of the names Sunday,” Mr. Waters said with a smile.

