Updates-blog

On a recent roadtrip along US 400, my son asked me, "Isn't 400 kind of a weird number for a highway?" Apparently even non-roadgeeks sense that there is something wrong with the US 400 designation. But it goes beyond that. This post examines all of the things that are wrong with US 400: not only its number, but also its purpose, its implementation, its intra-state nature, its collateral damage, and its amount of concurrent mileage with other US routes. But I'm getting ahead of myself; let's start from the beginning...

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Updates and recent changes

4/5/2018

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Denvers, Springfield, Kansas City, US 400, US 154, US 156, US 270, US 73, US 159, US 281, US 283, US 183, US 36, US 371, US 75, US 421, US 17, US 13, US 34, US 87, Montgomery, US 16, US 169, US 277, US 36, US 666, US 275, US 79, US 830, US 202, US 6, US 71, Madison NC, US 280, US 23, US 441, US 129, US 123, US 341, US 35, Chicago, US 180, US 411, Chattanooga, Springer, Trinidad

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Old US 285 along Speer Boulevard in Denver

3/10/2018

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I have always been fond of this perspective of downtown Denver: this is looking southeast on Speer Blvd, coming down out of the Highland neighborhood:

Sanderson, Mar. 2018

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My Mom, Miss Missaukee at Mackinac

11/1/2017

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1958 postage stamp

Michigan's two peninsulas are separated by the four-mile-wide Straits of Mackinac*, which is the body of water that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. In the 19th century passenger ferries transported people between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas, and in the 1920s, the state implemented car ferries so that people could get their automobiles across the Straits. Immediately there was great demand for this service, and soon there were reports that the lines of cars waiting to board would sometimes be backed up as much as 15 miles! Clearly there was a need for a bridge. This represented a monumental challenge, in terms of both engineering and expense. But in November 1957, the new Mackinac Bridge opened to traffic. At the time it was the costliest stretch of road in the world, and it remains one of the longest suspension bridges in the world.

*Pronounced MACK-ih-naw. Some locations spell it more phonetically - such as Mackinaw City - but both spellings are pronounced the same. The word is a French corruption of an Ojibwa name for a division of their tribe, early inhabitants of the area.

The website mackinacbridge.org has lots more information, history, facts, and figures about the Bridge itself... but the focus of this page is the Mackinac Bridge Dedication Festival, which took place the following summer.

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Updates and recent changes

9/13/2017

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Springer, US 330, Trinidad, US 27, US 601, US 73, US 218, US 34, US 53, US 54, International Falls, US 176, US 178, US 24, US 70, Madison NC, US 218, US 330, US 51, West Memphis, US 5, Milwaukee, US 151, US 110, US 63, US 53, US 36, US 285 [i], US 91, Idaho Falls, US 521, US 79, US 641, US 220; Waverly; US 258, US 460, Virginia Beach, US 58, US 122, US 222, US 240, US 340

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The 2017 solar eclipse follows US 26

8/19/2017

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Pretty amazing coincidence...

Heading west from Portland, US 26 enters the path of totality near Mt. Hood, and remains within the path for about 330 miles, all the way to the Idaho border:

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US highway history of Denver, Colorado

6/29/2017

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(Most recently updated 4/28/2018.) Today, Denver is served by seven different US routes: US 6, US 36, US 40, US 85, US 87, US 285, and US 287...

Get your very own map showing all current and historic US routes!

...but when the US highway system was first commissioned in late 1926, only three routes went through Denver. AASHO officials acknowledged the city's importance by placing it at the junction of a major north-south route (US 85, which ran from a Canadian port of entry almost to Mexico) and a transcontinental east-west route (US 40, which connected Atlantic City NJ to the San Francisco Bay Area):