US Ends .com

^ date reposted to this blog Sep. 07, 2019: originally posted to my old blog In southern Colorado, US 85 gets no respect . But in northern Colorado, it's a different story. Weld County and several of its municipalities along US 85 embrace the route. In 2011, they collectively christened it the Centennial Highway: Presumably the name comes from the Michener novel, which was largely set in and around the fictional town of Centennial. The story clearly took place in this part of the state, and maps included in the novel place the location of Centennial within Weld County (just downstream from Greeley). ​A stylized highway shield appears on several signs posted along US 85 throughout the county:

^ date reposted to this blog May 05, 2019: originally posted to my old blog The original bridge over Cottonwood Creek in this area was the 1887 stone arch bridge for the ATSF railroad. A parallel auto road was also built right along the west side of the RR. This became one of the most important early auto routes in Colorado, running north-south along the Front Range (in other words, a precursor to today's I-25). In fact it was designated "State Highway #1" in the 1920s. A new bridge for this road was built in 1923-24, just downstream (west) of the RR bridge. This is the same bridge that still stands today. It has long since been surrounded by the urban expanse of Colorado Springs, but back in 1924 this area was still quite rural. It was not yet a part of the Springs and the road was probably not yet referred to as Vincent Drive. This photo was taken from a vantage point on the stone arch bridge (now "New" Vincent Drive), looking west down Cottonwood Cre...

^ date reposted to this blog Jun. 29, 2017: originally posted to my old blog Jun. 02, 2026: last updated Today, Denver is served by seven different US routes (shown above), 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 The third US highway serving Denver was US 285, but it was not the same as the route that carries that designation today. Instead of heading west and south from Denver, the original US 285 went north from Denver, essentially following the route of modern US 287 through Broomfield, Lafayette, Longmont, Loveland, and Ft. Collins, ending in Laramie WY. Although US 285 [i] lasted only about eight years...