State Highway Maps
This article originally appeared in Exchange,
a newsletter published by the Wisconsin
Historical Society. (Volume
32, Number 4, Autumn 1990) It is the 12th in a series of articles titled Researching
Community History. The series highlights
the Society's resources available to local
historians. It was written by Tom McKay,
retired local history coordinator for the
Wisconsin Historical Society.
Local historians face the challenge of piecing together the history of a county or community from a wide variety of sources. When researching changes in transportation, local historians will find interesting bits and pieces and useful starting points about the automobile era on the official Wisconsin road maps printed by the state government. The State Highway Commission produced a tentative road map in November of 1914, and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin has copies of all but a few of the state's annual road maps from 1914 to the present. The maps do not circulate, but a day of study in the Society's Archives Research Room would be adequate to assemble important data on the automotive transportation history of any community in Wisconsin.
The earliest official road maps precede the designation of numbered state highways. These maps attempt to show main routes of travel and indicate, through differing widths of solid and dotted lines, the quality of road surfaces. The 1916 map advised travelers to inquire locally whether the road was passable before driving on the routes marked with dotted lines. It also solicited corrections from travelers for any routes that may have been inaccurately represented on the map.
In 1918 the Highway Commission began designating state highways by
number. Some highway numbers provide useful clues in
investigating a community's history. The state originally
numbered the road from Green Bay to Wausau as Highway
16. It continued with that number on the maps through
1926 but changed to Highway 29 in 1927. For historical societies in
communities along this route, the change in highway numbers may help
date photographs, advertisements or other historical materials that
display or make reference to the highway number. In 1934, State Highway
11 changed to U.S. Highway 14 — a useful reference point for
another group of communities. The 1938 map showed that the shape of
state highway signs changed from an inverted triangle to a shield.
Any photograph with a state highway sign in this shield shape dates
from 1938 or later.
Local historians can use the official state road maps to trace the
development of paved highways serving their communities.
The Wisconsin Historical Society collection of official
road maps has a gap between 1919 and 1924. The 1924
map and maps for succeeding years indicate through
differing solid and broken lines, the composition of
a road's surface. Paving of roads did not flow evenly
and gradually across the state. The road maps reveal
the completion of paved roads from Westby to Viroqua
between 1926 and 1927. However, the paving of the highway
from Westby to Coon Valley does not appear until the
1932 road map, and the completion of paving on U.S.
14 highway all the way from La Crosse to Madison comes
on the 1936 map. Drivers in northwestern Wisconsin
waited until 1948, when a section of U.S. Highway 53
was paved between Minong and Gordon, to have a hard-surfaced
road the entire route from Eau Claire to Superior.
The pattern of road paving may arouse the curiosity of local historians
in some parts of the state. For example, the 1928 road map shows
a very small section of Marathon County Trunk Highway
A paved at Hamburg. This hard-surfaced section remained isolated for
11 years until Highway A was paved from Hamburg to State Highway 51.
The dating of road improvements includes other features in addition to paving. The 1960 road map shows the opening of interstate highways in Wisconsin with the appearance of sections I-90 from Beloit to Janesville and Hudson to Elk Mound and a length of I-94 from Kenosha to the Milwaukee County line. The 1965 map shows the opening of the Highway 151 bypass around Beaver Dam. The highway maps do not provide precise dates for these events, but they do offer starting points for further research in local newspapers or other sources.
A miscellany of useful information appeared on the official state
road maps of different eras. Between 1924 and 1935
a symbol indicated which communities provided free
public campgrounds for tourists. Lookout towers first
appeared on the 1935 maps, and the 1941 map added symbols for waysides
such as the one east of Omro on Highway 21. Starting in 1950, the
road maps carried a chart of facilities at state parks. A researcher
can learn that Copper Falls State Park added electrical outlets for
campers between the 1950 and 1951 seasons. Researchers investigating
the decline of rural crossroads settlements can find when communities
such as Dill, Steward, Polk and Oakley in Green County disappeared
from the official state road map. A small number of local historians
may even discover photographs of their communities on the official
state road maps of the 1930s and '40s. Examples of views include the
old Wisconsin River bridge near Spring Green, a sawmill at Neopit
and the Mt. Valhalla ski area. Following the 1940s, photographs on
the maps change to unidentified, generic scenes.
Wisconsin's official state road maps will contain very little definitive information about a community's history. However, as a starting point they can help local historians begin to piece together the stories of a variety of developments in transportation and tourism that affected their communities. The maps also hold clues that will assist some historical societies in more accurately dating materials in their collections. Through just such bits and pieces, sources like the official state road maps fill in places in the complex puzzle of community history.
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