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US route wannabes: US 37 and US 143

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 ^ date reposted to this blog Jan. 20, 2021: originally posted to my old blog Dec. 2, 2023: last updated Did these routes ever exist? Short answer: they were designated by AASHO (very briefly), and for that reason they existed on some maps, but they were almost certainly never signposted. Read on for more details. Background: split US routes When the Bureau of Public Roads was planning the US route system in the mid-1920s, most local leaders wanted a US highway to pass through their town, because they recognized that such a designation would bring the perception of prestige and the potential for economic gain. Drivers traveling between two larger cities often had more than one route available to them, each having comparable distance, road surface quality, etc. Towns situated along the optional routes sometimes clashed over which route should be awarded a US designation, and sometimes these fights were so bitter that the state departments of transportation could not resolve them...
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Extreme points on the US highway system

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Wikipedia hosts an interesting article (or at least it's interesting to geography nerds like me) which lists the extreme points in the United States (e.g. the northernmost points in the US, the southernmost points, and so on).  This blog post could be considered a subset of that article, as I am discussing the extreme points on the US highway system.  (Since the US route network exists only in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii are outside the scope of this post, not to mention all US territories.)  We will start with the most obvious, and from there it will get more complicated. Easternmost points Most map projections make it rather clear that Maine is the easternmost state (although it is even farther east than many people realize).  The easternmost US route terminus is where US 2  almost reaches the Canada border, about three miles east of its junction with US 1 in Houlton ME: Historically (before I-95 was built) US 2 actually did reach the Canad...
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History of the old highway along the Colorado River

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At the time of this writing, it has been 50 years since the US 24 designation was cancelled between Grand Junction and Minturn, CO, leaving only US 6 along that stretch.  Nevertheless, some locals (particularly along the segment around Glenwood Springs, New Castle, Silt, and Rifle) still refer to the old road as "Highway 6 & 24". Gabe Chenoweth, General Manager of KMTS(FM) in Glenwood, was curious about that, so he did some searching online and found the usends.com website. Since he is also the host of a long-form interview program, he reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in discussing that subject on the air.  I agreed, and we did the interview on Sep. 29, 2025.  If you'd like to hear it, please visit this page . To prepare for that interview, I did a fair amount of research, but as it turned out, there wasn't enough time in the program to include all of the material.  Not wanting that effort to go to waste, I decided to post all of my...
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Highway history of Sherman-Denison TX

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^ date reposted to this blog Apr. 04, 2025: originally posted to my old blog Mar. 07, 2026: most recent update The main purpose of this article is to discuss the history of the US routes in the Texoma area. It is not my intention to review every state highway and farm-to-market route. Nevertheless, I do mention several of them in this article, but only those that somehow relate to the history of the US routes. When the US routes were commissioned in late 1926, US 75 was initially the only designation that served the Sherman-Denison area (at the time US 69 went only as far south as Kansas City, and US 82 did not yet exist). That was the condition illustrated on both of the following maps, from the early- and mid-1930s: c. 1931, Clason c. 1934, Rand McNally The current alignment of US 75 (which bypasses Denison to the north and west) was not built until about 1994. Originally, heading south from Oklahoma, US 75 followed what is now US 69 into Denison, but instead of curving onto Aus...
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Traces of history in the Virginia Village area

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^ date reposted to this blog May 25, 2023: originally posted to my old blog Jun. 19, 2023: last updated Do you ever think about what was here, before you were here? Before we all were here, with all of our roads, neighborhoods, houses, parks, buildings? We could go way back, millions of years, when the area that would later be known as "Denver" was still submerged beneath the western edge of a vast interior sea . ​Or we could go back not quite as far, maybe just 200 or 300 years, to a time when the only humans living in this area were those who belonged to the local Native American tribes. As they went in search of game, or moved their camps from one place to another, they formed trails, particularly along the streams in the area. ​Settlers of European descent did not begin to arrive here in earnest until the 1850s, less than 200 years ago. The old Native American trail along the east bank of Cherry Creek started to be used by new groups of people, who referred to it as...
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