Updates-blog - US Ends .com

US 400: its number is not the only error

4/11/2018

The easternmost of US 400's many overlaps with other US routes.

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...

Updates and recent changes

4/5/2018

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

Old US 285 along Speer Boulevard in Denver

3/10/2018

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

My Mom, Miss Missaukee at Mackinac

11/1/2017

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.

Updates and recent changes

9/13/2017

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

The 2017 solar eclipse follows US 26

8/19/2017

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:

US highway history of Denver, Colorado

6/29/2017

(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...

...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):

c. 1927, Rand McNally

Updates and recent changes

6/6/2017

US 258, US 460, Virginia Beach, US 58, US 122, US 222, US 240, US 340, US 17, US 13, US 117, US 378, US 521, US 21, US 278, Midway GA, US 441, US 192, US 202, Erie, Trinidad, Gallup, US 400, US 311, Hardeeville, US 25, US 341, Brunswick, US 3, US 20, Wrightsville Beach, Wilmington, US 421, US 67, US 91, US 61, Aberdeen, US 8, US 41, Miami, US 27, US 92, Jacksonville, Key West, US 82, US 319

Colorado actually does sign some US routes along interstates, but...

6/2/2017

Colorado is somewhat infamous for not signposting its US routes where they are concurrent with interstates. This is more than just signage policy: CDoT route logs actually divide US routes into segments, and these segments are discontinuous in cases where the US route shares pavement with an interstate. So in a sense, CDoT considers US routes to be non-existent wherever their implied route is on an interstate. This notion has resulted in at least one very strange sign, shown here:

Sanderson, May 2017

That was taken looking west on I-270 at its interchange with I-25. Straight ahead on the Boulder Turnpike is the east "beginning" of US 36... that is, assuming one disregards the 1300-mile segment of US 36 behind the camera. (Incidentally, heading the opposite direction, there is a "Begin I-270" assembly, but it is not accompanied with an "End US 36" sign.)

Highway history of Waco, Texas

3/8/2017

When the US highway numbers were assigned in 1927, US 81 was the only route initially serving Waco. But US 77 soon joined with it, when it was extended down from Dallas in 1933. These routes were concurrent south of Hillsboro, and through Waco they followed New Dallas Highway, Hillsboro Drive, Elm Street, Washington Street, 18th Street, and Circle Road, to the Circle. From there they diverged, with US 77 following Robinson Road, and US 81 following the corridor now occupied by I-35.