“Highway Explorer” comes through again….this time with pics of an old iron bridge in Reads Landing in Wabasha County. This bridge is at the west end of 202nd Street, just north of modern U.S. 61. It is now used as a private entrance. Although it was once part of the Wabasha Military Road, this bridge [...]
Today we have another set of photos from “Highway Explorer”, this time of a stretch of old highway in the northeastern corner of Rice County. This road, now labeled on maps as Albany Avenue, was once part of State Highway 165. However, its history goes back a bit further. (See below for a map of [...]
Hopefully you fellow road geeks out there were able to catch Cathy Wurzer’s new documentary on Highway 61, “Tales of the Road” on Monday Evening. If not, they’ll be replaying it this Saturday (March 28) at 8 PM. Its a must-see for anyone into highway history! For more info on the doc, check out the [...]
Hello all. Just a quick entry today. I finally finished my initial redesign of the “Map Collection” section of deadpioneer.com! I will be continuing work on it in the coming weeks. For now, I just wanted to get rid of all the old pages that used the old site design. As of today, all pages [...]
Kim Mensinger has sent in some nice photos of a couple of the historic bridges on the Cannon Bottom Road, just west of Red Wing, which was bypassed in 1931 (it was once part of U.S. 61 and Constitutional Route 3). These bridges are scheduled to be demolished in the next few years. For more info [...]
Update – 8/1/2009 – It turns out this information is false, Highway 16 is still signed between La Crescent and the Wisconsin State Line. It has come to my attention that State Highway 16 has been truncated at its junction with U.S. 61 and U.S. 14 in La Crescent. It had previously duplexed with these [...]
MnDOT has released images of the three proposed designs for the replacement of the U.S. 61 bridge over the Mississippi River at Hastings. These include a single tied arch (similar in appearance to the old bridge), a dual box girder crossing (like the new 35W bridge in Minneapolis), and a single cable bridge. Although I [...]
I came across this little article on Boston.com about the state of Vermont ordering towns to claim their historic road right-of-ways, or lose public access to them. Looks like the state of Vermont has a problem on its hands. Perhaps they should have kept better track of right-of-ways? Now if only Minnesota needed someone to [...]
“Highway Explorer” has found and photographed three long lost sections of U.S. 14 between the towns of Winona and Stockton in southeastern Minnesota, complete with original pavement and retaining walls! These sections were once part of one of Minnesota’s first concrete highways, constructed by Winona County between 1914 and 1915. This early highway was actually [...]