A History of Minnesota’s Highways, Part One

This is the first part of a series on the history of Minnesota’s highway system. This is not intended to be exhaustive or strictly chronological. Rather the idea is to present certain milestones and points where source material is available and that I think readers will find informative or interesting. There’s also a few topics I will only touch briefly as they are tangential to the main flow and are worthy of articles in themselves. These include things like Minnesota in maps, the idea of traffic management, motoring for pleasure instead of transportation, and a topic I have already covered: the I-35W bridge collapse and associated politics will likewise be brief.  The series will start off from the early days to the implementation of the state highway system and  continue on with additions and contractions to the system since then. Next it will take a step back to cover the conception and reality of our expressways and freeways, ending with a few thoughts on the future.

Highways of the Pioneer Era

Even in the territorial days roads were being built in Minnesota. On July, 18 1850 U.S. Congress, with the Minnesota Road Act,  authorized a series of military roads.

• The Point Douglas and St. Louis River (later Superior) Road
• The Point Douglas and Fort Gaines (later Camp Ripley) Road
• The Big Sioux and Mendota Road
• The Swan River and Long Prairie Road
• The Wabashaw  and Mendota Road

In the following map I noted the Dodd Road section of the Big Sioux and Mendota Road, which we’ll discuss soon.

Justification of roads for their military value is a theme that would continue. The authorization for part of Highway 100 happened in the middle of WWII to connect the western part of the Twin Cities with the Twin Cities Arsenal. The interstate system was justified partly by military value too; the official name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways and of course Dwight D. Eisenhower, the system’s champion, had a military background. But as with the interstates, use by civilians was vastly more than use by the military.

Along with government roads, private enterprise also built roads. Road work in the pioneer days looked often like the picture below. At the time able bodied men were required to work two days on the roads. Particularly in the southeast “Minnesota Triangle” there was a network of private stagecoach roads. In the northwest were the Red River Oxcart trails, created by a man from Pembina, Joe Rolette, in 1842.

They ran from a part of Manitoba then called the Red River colony to Mendota. Furs were the usual cargo southbound, with miscellaneous supplies the northbound cargo. Portions one of the trails is still visible in Crow Wing State Park.

Another prominent early private road was the Dodd Road. Captain William Bigellow Dodd was a pioneer who staked a 160 acre claim and founded the town of Rock Bend, later renamed St. Peter. Realizing the economic development potential of the road (sound familiar?), Dodd got together with Aguste Larpenteur, son of St. Paul businessman Charles Larpenteur, who helped with financing, and Dodd began laying out the road in 1853. One of the military roads, the Mendota-Big Sioux Road (to what is now Sioux City, IA), was to be in more or less the general area, but it was last on the government’s priority list and Dodd wanted to make sure it didn’t bypass his town. Dodd was paid $3270 by the military for his contribution. Ultimately though he didn’t have long to enjoy his creation, in 1862 he was killed defending his town in the Dakota Conflict.

With the help of the road, St. Peter became a major trading post, and at one point was under consideration as a new state capitol. There was in fact a bill in the territorial legislature to “rob Paul to pay Peter” and move the State Capitol to St. Peter. Joe Rolette was by now a legislator and was opposed to the bill. In one of the more amusing anecdotes of Minnesota history, he literally took the law into his own hands and took the bill and disappeared with it, not returning until it was to late for it to be passed. Ultimately the new state of Minnesota left Pembina outside it’s borders and Rolette died having lost his fortune and been forgotten in 1871.

Despite the early roadbuilding efforts on the Dodd Road and elsewhere, for the most part, in the old days, you avoided travel by land if at all possible. This became even more true with the coming of the railroads and roads were only a path through the muck to get from your farm to the nearest station or nearest town. Long distance road trips beyond a days drive to the county seats were unthinkable. But with the coming of automobile (first shown to Minnesotans in 1895), this had to change. There was no point in owning a car that could  give you the freedom to jump in and travel from Minneapolis to California if there were no roads to do so.

A major milestone was the introduction of concrete to rural roads in 1911: A single 9 foot strip of concrete was laid down near Red Wing. At the speeds and traffic volumes of the the day, one driver would simply move off the road in the rare event of meeting someone coming the other direction. Here’s a surviving stretch of 9 foot pavement, just visible before the tree line on private property near Winona

Legacies of the Early Days

A portion of the Point Douglas to Superior Military Road  still exists, as the old stone bridge off the Brown’s Creek State Trail in Stillwater. Right now it’s on private property, barely visible from the Browns Creek State Trail. Another section is visible in Wild River State Park

This is in an out-of-the way spot on an already quiet and secluded park. You can just sit among the birches and imagine the history that happened so long ago.

The most famous legacy of course is the Zumbrota covered bridge, built for an old stagecoach road.

In 1932 a new modern bridge was constructed for the highway and then moved and plopped down in a field on the fairgrounds for the next 65 years. Finally in 1997 it was moved again next to its old location to once again span the river, this time as a bicycle and pedestrian crossing. The next year the worst flood in 100 years struck. The water came inches from the bottom at the new location, and totally inundated the old field at the fairgrounds. Had it not been moved it would have undoubtedly been destroyed.

The Silverdale Bridge, built of iron at Sauk Center in 1890, it was moved to a very remote area of the north woods in 1932, where it remained until 2010 when it was moved and restored for use on the Browns Creek Trail over Manning Ave.

Legacies also still exist in the form of old names. “Military Road” in Cottage Grove. Sections of “Dodd Road” in Dakota County (although north of MN 55 it actually wasn’t the original Dodd Road, which veered west to Mendota). In the early days numbers the road to Pleasantville would simply be called Pleasantville Road. In the Twin Cities we have Rockford Road (the modern MN 55 is a much, much later creation), Hudson Road, Bloomington Road, Eden Prairie Road, Old Shakopee Road, and Anoka Blvd, to name a few. Old Shakopee Road in fact predates European settlement and was known as an old road even back in pioneer days.

The Auto Trail Era

With the dawn of the automobile, private associations and local chambers of commerce formed with the intent of marking and promoting the best route for motorists, the “auto trails”. The most famous of these are still in popular culture: the Dixie Highway, the Lincoln Highway, the Yellowstone Trail, the Jefferson Highway. Some of these associations are still active to promote the history of their highway.  Markers tended to be abbreviations and color blocks, easy to paint on utility poles rather than having metal signs. A map of Minnesota circa 1920, shows select national auto trails in colors and other auto trails in grey.

Things to note:

• Although the concept of a Twin Cities to Winnipeg route through Bemidji didn’t last, most of these routes are still recognizable as today’s major highways
• A few others: The North Shore Drive was the Scott Highway I-90 / MN 16 was the Southern Minnesota Air Line.
• The idea that motoring for pleasure dates back to the early days. The Mississippi Valley Scenic Highway seems to be the spiritual predecessor to the Great River Road.

Especially in the metro environs, sources are conflicting on the exact routing. I also used various sources at slightly different times, so it should be regarded as not a snapshot of a specific year, but a compilation of some early routings.

Things to note:

• Although there was an established route across the Bloomington Ferry Bridge and up Old Shakopee Road and W 7th street, the Daniel Boone Trail instead crossed the Shakopee Bridge, followed the river bottoms before emerging and following Eden Prairie road through the village of Eden Prairie to meet up with the Yellowstone Trail. The routing along the river bottoms has been abandoned for decades (my 1982 Hudson’s atlas notes it as “road closed”), but is visible on Google Earth.
• The Mississippi Valley Highway splits to go to both Minneapolis and St. Paul. An idea that would be ressurected years later as I-35W and I-35E.
• What is now Broadway Ave and Bottineau Blvd is the main route of town to the northwest, and the Mississippi Valley Highway was the main route out of town from St. Paul to the north. But we can see the concept of cutoff routes, where you could head northwest out of St. Paul through New Brighton to bypass downtown Minneapolis, and northeast out of downtown Minneapolis.
• The concept of a cutoff route from the Old Cedar Bridge to meet the Jefferson Highway at Farmington was never quite a reality. If the weather wasn’t too bad you could probably navigate it over local farm roads, but an improved, marked road never happened in the auto trail era.

The state of Minnesota acknowledged and even officially registered the auto trails.

Auto trails definately served their purpose for way-finding. But there were two fatal flaws:

• The roads themselves were still maintained and improved at the whim of and by whatever resources could be had by local governments. Conditions varied wildly; just because it was the “best” route didn’t necessarily mean it was anything close to resembling “good”.
• Some unscrupulous associations would direct motorists to their own town rather than the best way for through traffic.

In light of these flaws, momentum grew for a state system of trunk highways.

The State Gets Involved

As early as 1890 there was state involvement in highways, with the state contributing funds towards the Old Cedar and Bloomington Ferry Bridges. A 1898 constitutional amendment allowed the state to directly be involved in road and bridge construction, which started with the establishment of the State Highway Commission in 1905. By the 1910s it was obvious the auto was the wave of the future for personal travel and trucks for commerce was imminent, so demand for more and better roads continued. The Good Roads Movement, initially formed by bicyclists in the 1870s, turned towards lobbying for roads for automobiles in the early part of the last century.

In 1912 the Dunn Amendment was passed. This separated Minnesota’s roads into:

• “State Roads”: to be constructed by the counties with state aid, under rules of the State Highway Commission.
• County Roads: to be constructed by the counties with their own funding, under rules of the State Highway Commission, to be maintained by the townships
• Township Roads: to be constructed and maintained by the townships.

I use scare quotes around “state roads” because they were more along the lines of what we would call County State Aid Highways (CSAHs) in funding sources, jurisdiction, and function today. There was still a strong farm to market emphasis rather than on long distance travel.

“State roads” were no solution for long distance motoring. So momentum grew for a cohesive system truly under state control.in 1917 the direct predecessor agency to Mn/DOT, the Minnesota Department of Highways was formed. (Generally they seemed to have called themselves just the “Department of Highways” or the “Minnesota Highway Department” [MHD] so I’ll refer to them as such for the remainder of this series). Charles M. Babcock, an Elk River businessman who saw the economic importance of highways to his town and to the state, was the first commissioner.  He had been appointed as a member of the State Highway Commission back in 1910. Besides being the first commissioner, he was active nationally in the American Road Builders Association, the American Association of State Highway Officials, and the National Safety Council, and represented the United States at the Pan American Congress of Highways. In 1920 Babcock authored the Babcock Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution.

When approved by state voters on November 2, the Minnesota Trunk Highway system was authorized. Enabling legislation passed (Minnesota Laws, Chapter 323, the “Public Highway Act”) passed the legislature in 1921, and the system, with the first 70 “Constitutional Routes” was established.

A few notes:

• The numbering is arbitrary, except for that fact that the lower numbers were the longest, most important routes, with Constitutional Route (C.R.) 1 being probably the most important of all, today I-35 and MN 61.
• Due to space constraints on the map I’ve only labeled 1-15 and a few others. If you want to see all the route numbers I suggest looking at one of the digitized old official Minnesota state maps, for example the one from 1926.
• There are a few that still have the same marked number and extent that they did in 1920, for example C.R./MN 58, and many more where the original number is part of a longer or shorter route.
• As a system, one is struck by the extent to which they are what is still the core of our trunk highway system,  our most important highways then and now.
• Although there were several border to border trunk highways both north to south and east to west (and notice how long C.R. 11 was), what is now I-94 and US 10 did not have a single number. The only major change is the southwestern half of MN 23 did not exist as a concept.
• The obvious question is why were so many of the numbers are so different than today. That will be covered in later in this series

As a side note, MnDOT saw this and liked it so much they asked permission to use it in an official publication

Here’s the metro map.

A few notes:

• As described in the legend, constitutional routes did not exist inside Minneapolis and St. Paul. They were marked, but not under state jurisdiction. (I’ll refer to them subsequently as “marked connecting routes” or just “routes”)
• The marquee route, C.R. 1, goes to St. Paul, not Minneapolis. This theme has continued in a minor way by having I-35E the designated through route (I-35W is marked as an “exit” of I-35, and exit numbering sequence for I-35 continuing on I-35E).
• The main route to the south from Minneapolis, C.R. 50, was built as an extension of Lyndale Ave with a new bridge, not the existing bridge at Cedar Ave as originally intended, due to pressure from Minneapolis business interests. It didn’t exist at all until the mid 1920s and the idea of the main route being straight south, rather than through Farmington and Northfield is much much later, not really until I-35 was built in the 1960s.
• The concept of what is now US 52 didn’t really exist in the southeast suburbs. C.R. 20 covered most of it south of Cannon Falls. , and then C.R 50 for a bit north of Cannon Falls, but as you can see it veered west at Hampton to go to Minneapolis.  The main route to the southeast went along the river, CR 3/US 61 to Winona, which was a lot more important relative to Rochester than it is now. Rochester eventually got the complete high speed expressway; the one to Winona was never finished, with plans to build a Red Wing bypass cancelled years ago.
• Concord Blvd was part of a very old wagon road that went to the town of Concord, where several such roads converged. However it’s importance was not kept in the auto trails era and was not kept here. It seems to be mainly a minor back door route to Hastings.
• The lack of paving on C.R. 5 and C.R. 12 very close to the city was undoubtedly due to plans to consolidate C.R. 5 and C.R. 12 on a new diagonal alignment between them, today’s Flying Cloud Drive, now known as CSAH 61 but for close to 70 years a major part of the trunk highway system. There was a “state road” on more or less Flying Cloud Drive’s alignment that didn’t make the cut as an initial trunk highway, but it seemed more oriented towards enabling farmers in Eden Prairie to get to Shakopee than as a through route.

Here’s a 1920 map showing the trunk highways in the metro

A few notes:

• Route 12 takes a weird jog at Mississippi River Blvd to go down Summit Ave instead of Marshall Ave. By the late 1920s Marshall Ave was indicated as a designated truck route west of Lexington before the entire highway was moved there during the great expansion and renumbering we’ll discuss in a later article.
• C.R. 1 has the label “Jefferson Highway” rather than “Dodd Road”. Apparently there’s disagreement as to if the 1853 Dodd Road, as mentioned in Part One, went all the way to the High Bridge or not. The source I used, a publication by the Dakota County Historical Society, stated clearly that it did not, but apparently other historical sources differ. I’ll just leave it at that.
• C.R. 50 was not yet built south of town, so is not marked as Route 50 in the city.
• In keeping with the times of putting the trunk highway down the main street, Route 5 went down Nicollet Ave, which until the Gateway Redevelopment fed directly into the Hennepin Ave Bridge.
• A late 1920s modification in downtown Minneapolis moved Route 3 to Washington Ave and extended Route 10 over Hennepin Ave.

In St. Paul the routes also went straight through downtown, but is wasn’t long before the wisdom of routing traffic around the core of the downtowns came about. Congestion was a big problem in downtown St. Paul, due to the narrower streets, and St Paul has even resorted to chopping off the facades of buildings to widen streets.  In the early 1930s Kellogg Blvd was overlaid on the old 3rd Street and the marked routes moved onto it. Kellogg Blvd foreshadowed the ambivalent results of much bigger urban renewal and highway projects to come. Although entire blocks worth of buildings were lost on the south side, it did much to alleviate traffic congestion and also opened up views of the river from the rest of downtown.

Part Two of this series will cover the rapid construction programs of the 1920s and two major numbering changes

A History of Minnesota’s Highways, Part Two

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