The Model A Ford Club of America, a national club for fans of vehicles built by Ford Motor Company between 1927 and 1931, is discussing historical highways as a way to encourage members of MAFCA to drive their Model A’s on longer distance tours.The plan is to reward club members for driving segments of historical highways. Having logged several thousand miles on cross-country tours in a Model A, Ol’ Lugnuts heartily concurs.
Not everyone realizes the significance of the historic highways that MAFCA is talking about. In the last few years, thanks to a grass-roots effort on the part of old highway fans, awareness of historic highways in on the rise.
Drivers today take interstates, freeways, expressways, boulevards and paved streets for granted. The Interstate system has always been there if you’re under 40 but if you’re older, you remember what crummy highways were once out there.
Even before that, highways were anything but high and hardly a way. Before the turn of the 20th Century, there were few, if any, routes marked for interurban transit and little need for them. The United States was primarily an agrarian society and most Americans lived their entire lives within 25 miles of home. Most cross country travelers rode first, in stagecoaches and later, in passenger trains. Many rural roads were little more than an unplowed alley between fields were mostly used by farmers to get product “to town.”
The rising of what was called “The Good Roads Movement” in the United States was spurred on by bicycle riders before the days of the automobile. Many farmers resisted the building of good roads, many times because road improvements were often tied to assessments to land adjacent to the roadway. This regressive tax kept road improvement at bay in Iowa for many years with referendum after referendum going down to defeat. When the road improvement taxes were spread out over the state, Iowa came out of the mud and became a showplace of road development.
Wisconsin was a key player in the development of today’s highway system. License plates were used in Wisconsin starting in 1905 and in 1907, the legislature laid out a system of county roads. By 1911, the increased popularity of the automobile made it obvious that longer distance (so called “trunkline”) roadways were needed.
In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association started to build the first cross-country paved highway and soon, nearly 250 named trails and roads criss-crossed the United States in a dizzying array. In Wisconsin, the Yellowstone Trail entered through Kenosha and exited the state through Hudson.
Named roads used signs such as this one. Often there was no sign, simply three bands of color painted around a utility pole. When many named roads used a concurrent route, a dizzying array of color stripes might be painted around utility poles. In time, the named highway indicators became more confusing than helpful.
Travelers who wished to venture out with automobiles used tour guides published by automobile clubs or private enterprise. Guides known as “Blue Books” and “Green Books” provided directions for motorists. Most were written like a car club tour, with directions such as “Continue north to the church, turn left and go three miles to the yellow farmhouse then turn right to the school.” Farmers who hated automobiles for many reasons, might repaint their landmark house to spite the “automobilists.”
It was a problem on many levels.
Plans were underway to try to straighten out the mess. States were wrestling with their own trunk highway systems while the federal government was concerned with interstate travel. In 1916, the first federal highway legislation was passed and it inspired the first plan for a state trunk highway system. That first plan for a trunk highway system was in Wisconsin.
“The Yellowstone Trail” was a coast-to-coast road that ran from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound. It was the only named, national road to traverse Wisconsin, entering in Kenosha and exiting at Hudson.
In 1918, named trails were outlawed in Wisconsin which made the Yellowstone Trail, the only national trail in Wisconsin, illegal. A system of numbered trunk highways was designed to connect county seats and population centers of more than 5,000 people. The lowest numbers were to be the longest routes. To avoid any kind of perception that numbers might be a ranking of importance, no single digit numbers were used for state highways. When federal highways came into play in 1926, Wisconsin also decided that there would be no duplication of state and federal numbers. The philosophies of no duplication of numbers and no single digit state highways remains in effect today. (Hwy 2 & Hwy 8 are federal routes.)
In one week during May of 1918, county work crews went out throughout the state. Armed with stencils and paint, they marked state trunk highway routes using newly-assigned numbers. It was the first time in the world that highways were numbered and marked. Oil companies began to print maps with Wisconsin’s numbered highways shortly thereafter.
Michigan followed later in 1918 as did Minnesota in 1919. Soon numbered state highways became the norm across the country. (It must also be noted that Ohio had printed maps with numbered routes as early as 1912, however, no signage was erected in Ohio until 1922.)
The federal mandate for numbered highways did not come into play until 1926. Even numbers go east-west and odd numbers go north-south. Cross country highways end in 0, 1 or 5. This meant Wisconsin had to adjust state numbering to accommodate US Routes 10, 41, 45 and 51. US 10 is the only major highway interrupted by a lake and is continued by ferry service aboard the S.S. Badger.
The markers for Wisconsin Trunk Highways in 1918 consisted of a triangle with the apex pointing downward. It was taller than wide, with the number of the highway and the letters, “WIS” painted vertically, into the apex of the triangle. The text, “State Trunk Highway” was spelled out across the top, in very small letters. Other signs in the same shape warned of railroad crossings and other hazards. Another sign included a mile marker that indicated the distance from the eastern or southern terminus of the numbered highway. (Mile markers are still in use on Wisconsin state highways, but you have to know where to look for them!)
The 1917 Marker had the verbiage “STATE TRUNK HIGHWAY.” Wisconsin was the very first place that such signage was used in the entire world.
Federal highway signage began to appear in 1926 and the “Wisconsin Trunk Highway” verbiage was dropped from state signs in 1927.
Federal Highway signage included the state name across the top of the sign. The federal shield was easy to recognize next to a state trunk sign.
Later, a rectangle, with rounded corners, was superimposed over the triangle to contain the numbers. The letters, “WIS” were moved to the top of the triangle, above the numbers.The signs remained virtually unchanged, except for typefaces to meet uniformity standards, until the mid 1960’s. At that time, today’s familiar black box background was introduced.
The word “Wisconsin” was moved from the triangle to the rectangle. “Wisconsin” was completely spelled out for the first and only time. Black outlines of the rectangle and triangle remained for a short time.
The black box sign was first used in the mid 1960’s.
Federal Shields also began to use the black box background in the mid 1960’s.In subsequent designs of state signs, starting in the 1970’s, the black outlines were removed. “Wisconsin” reverted to “Wis” and eventually was taken off completely. All text was removed from the federal shields at the same time. Wisconsin’s unique triangle symbol remains as part of the sign design to pay homage to what once was, but it also easily identifies a state highway.
All text, except for the numbers identifying the highway, have been removed from Wisconsin Trunk Highway and Federal signage. The 1917 triangle remains a part of the state highway signs, paying homage to what went before.
In subsequent designs of state signs, starting in the 1970’s, the black outlines were removed. “Wisconsin” reverted to “Wis” and eventually was taken off completely. All text was removed from the federal shields at the same time. Wisconsin’s unique triangle symbol remains as part of the sign design to pay homage to what once was, but it also easily identifies a state highway.The federal highway shield came into use in 1926 and featured the word “Wisconsin” along with the “US” designation. In the early 1960’s, the federal shield was imposed on the black background, “Wisconsin” was shorted to “Wis.” About 1965, the word “Wisconsin” was removed and eventually, the “US” text was removed and today, only the federal highway number appears inside the shield.
Federal highway shields also included state names elsewhere. Eventually, all text was been removed and the familiar “black box” federal shield is seen everywhere.
As highways improved, many municipalities asked to be bypassed. Not long after the towns were bypassed, downtown businesses began to feel the pinch from a lack of traffic. The old route became designated as a “Business Route” or “City” using the old numbers, attempting to draw some traffic back into the old downtowns. The Business designator is also a federal shield, sometimes colored yellow but not as often as in the past. The orange color, shown below, is only used in temporary construction signage now..As highways improved, many municipalities asked to be bypassed. Not long after the towns were bypassed, downtown businesses began to feel the pinch from a lack of traffic. The old route became designated as a “Business Route” or “City” using the old numbers, attempting to draw some traffic back into the old downtowns. The Business designator is also a federal shield, sometimes colored yellow but not as often as in the past. The orange color, shown below, is only used in temporary construction signage now.
The Business designator is also a federal shield, sometimes colored yellow but not as often as in the past. The orange color, shown below, is only used in temporary construction signage now. This sign used to be just outside Janesville.
County trunk highways, indicated by letters from the very beginning, when through a similar genesis of signage. Always rectangular in shape, today’s county trunk highway sign has the familiar black background behind a white rectangle with the word “County” above the letter designation.
Visitors to Wisconsin are often baffled by the letter designations of county roads, designated since the very begining. Each county controls the letter designations, and a person traveling through seven counties could conceivably encounter seven Highway A designations. Wisconsin residents are equally baffled at the county road designations in other states, some with four digit numbers to figure out.
If MAFCA implements awards for traveling a historic road, members in Wisconsin will be able to qualify by driving the Yellowstone Trail, a national road that went from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound. There is also a plan being formulated to travel the entire length of The Lincoln Highway. Contact the author for more information.
Good resources: http://www.wisconsinhighways.org/ http://lincolnhighwayassoc.org/ http://www.yellowstonetrail.org/index.htm Some sign Images courtesy of Jim Lin of the University of California. His highway websites are legendary and can be found at: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~jlin/signs/ http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~jlin/links/ http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~jlin/lincoln/ And…Jim is the web master of the Lincoln Highway Association website: http://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/
Most of the Wisconsin road signs are courtesy of Christopher Bessert who created them for his website, http://www.wisconsinhighways.org.
The graphics in this post may not be copied or used in any manner without the permission of the copyright holders.