Sometimes the fun is the journey, not the destination, and thus my series of phototours of scenic, notable, or historic highways and the sights found on or nearby.
Background
For a comprehensive history and more background of Minnesota’s trunk highway system see my series “A History of Minnesota’s Trunk Highways“; I’ll just skim over it with respect to the road to Duluth here. Originally the road to Duluth was the Mississippi Valley Highway Auto Trail, marked with orange and white signs on utility poles. Despite the name and markings however, it could still only be called a “road” in a charitable sense.
Here’s a road trip fail along it from the early 1920s:
Substantial improvement was soon to come however. In 1920 the state created a system of trunk highways, and of course the road to Duluth was included. The road to Duluth, as probably the most important one in the state, was given the marquee number 1, and paving still followed. In the early days paving was invariably concrete as asphalt was not yet ready for prime time, usually just a thin layer over gravel to keep the dust down. And asphalt was more expensive back in the day; nowadays it’s essentially a waste product left over after the much more valuable liquid fuels are refined from crude oil. After a very brief experiment with a single 9 foot lane, requiring one of the vehicles to pull off into the muck if you met an oncoming vehicle, a pair of 9 foot lanes was standard. Over time this gradually increased to today’s standard of 12 feet, preferably with paved shoulders, as speeds got faster, vehicles larger, and traffic volumes heavier.
Unsurprisingly Highway 1 was one of the first roads paved. Although in 1925 only St Paul to Forest Lake and Carlton to Duluth were paved, by the end of 1927 paving was complete. Also in 1927 another major change came to the road with the coming of the U.S numbered highway system; US 61 was overlaid on Route 1 (the Route 1 designation was removed from signs in 1934 with a statewide renumbering and expansion but is still the road’s legal number except within the city limits of St. Paul and Duluth). From the early paving to the 1960s were a series of alignment changes as the road was improved and modernized here and there, including some upgrades to four lane expressway. Keeping track of all these changes is a real task, and to that I give credit to a fellow area roadgeek who goes by the internet name “Deadpioneer“. He has an interactive map of all the old alignments. Finally I-35 came, the US 61 / Constitutional Route 1 was moved onto it north of Wyoming.
So now it’s time to start exploring the old road. This isn’t meant to be a photograph of every small town sign, every abandoned stretch of road, every roadside motel, but just a selection of what caught my eye. Also please note: although presented as a single narrative, the photos are actually from two complete trips and a couple of shorter supplemental ones during the fall of 2018
St. Paul to White Bear Lake
Highway 61 doesn’t and never has gone into the downtown St. Paul area, so a logical place to pick it up is at the freeway exit closest to downtown. 6th Street used to be the main route of downtown (now obliterated by I-94). Constitutional Route 1, coming from Albert Lea not La Crescent, followed 6th Street out of downtown, but Old Highway 61 instead came in from the left on Mounds Blvd before turning to the northeast towards me. (The current Highway 61 goes left to right). It looks like this portion of 6th Street has been semi-permanently closed to redirect traffic around Metropolitan State University.
6th Street curves to the north at Arcade St, and as Arcade street crosses 7th we pick up the current US 61
Here’s a map of the area.
Following Highway 61 north on Arcade Street, it struck me as a blue-collar commercial strip that had seen better days. I was eager to move on, stopping only once for a quick picture.
Right at the St. Paul City limits the expressway segment begins. There was a plan to extend the expressway all the way to downtown. It’s unfortunate that this never happened since it would have done much to relieve the nightmarish congestion on I-35E. In some areas the original alignment of Old Highway 61 differ notably from the expressway, in some cases rebuilt as local streets, in one case as part of the Keller Golf Course access road, in some cases obliterated
A little later, at the junction MN 36. If you look closely you can see the old, long abandoned fluorescent sign lights that were used briefly in the 1970s as opposed to the mercury vapor lights before and after. Overhead sign lighting started to be turned off as unnecessary in the early 1990s when new reflective sign panels were installed.
86.5% of St. Paul households own a car, yet there’s not a single franchised new car dealer within city limits. In a phenomenon I’ve noted before, city residents tend to flock to low value land uses like car dealers in the suburbs without having to deal with them in city limits. Highway 61 through the various cities from MN 36 to White Bear Lake seems to be one long string of car dealers, for the residents of St. Paul and the northern suburbs to buy their cars.
White Bear Lake
Down the road a bit we enter the city of White Bear Lake. The name “White Bear Lake” comes from a Native American legend involving a man saving his lover from a great white bear.
These last two were at Lions Park, where I parked in order to walk back an photograph the White Bear Lake sign
Where Old Highway 61 took a turn to the right here onto Lake Ave.
There’s a nice plaque at the intersection detailing the history of the area.
It Reads:
Lake Avenue, one of the most historic streets in White Bear, was one the most traveled path of residents and visitors alike. State Highway 1 followed roughly the route of today’s Highway 61 from the south and curved around this corner to follow the shore of the lake until it met present-day Stewart Avenue where it again veered north and continued on it’s way out of town. The highway was re-routed in 1935 and then was renamed Highway 61. [Note: this is incorrect, US 61 was overlaid on Route 1 in 1927 and then Route 1 was removed in the 1934 great renumbering]
The St. Paul and Duluth Railroad completed the line from St. Paul to White Bear in the fall of 1868 and connected to Duluth by 1871 which triggered the beginning of White Bear’s golden resort era. People cam via train from St. Paul and farther south, often traveling to Minnesota on steamboat and then on from rail there. Several depots or stations alongside numerous sets of track, were located in this area, including the Lakeshore depot near what is now Veteran’s Park, the main depot at Fourth Street and the today’s Highway 61; a small stop at Tenth Street and the Bald Eagle depot at the junction with the Soo Line just north of downtown.
White Bear-Minnesota’s First Resort Town-featured grand lakeside resorts that could accommodate up to 300 guests in their hotels and cottages. From the 1870s until about 1910 Lake Avenue was was the site of many lakeside cottages as well as several of the area’s larger resorts including the Williams house and the Chateaugay. It was common to see steamers trolling the water between this spot and Manitou Island often with orchestras on their decks to entertain the hotel guests.
Evidence of this early leisure time remains today in the steep drop-off under the water where the bottom of the lake was dredged to allow the steamers to get close to shore
Over the years the use of the recreational trail along Lake Avenue has increased but the draw of the beautiful views and fresh air have remained the same.
People would come and spend a day; a week, or a summer on the shores of the lake. Back in the day, Wildwood Amusement Park was the marquee attraction. The streetcar companies, in order to drum up traffic on would build “trolley parks” on their lines. In 1899 they built Wildwood Amusement Park on the southeast shore of the lake. There were a few rides including one of the first Tilt-A-Whirls, a roller coaster[ the Pippin, a swimming beach with bathhouses, a concert pavilion, and a ballroom. Here’s a postcard about 1910, with a toboggan ride into the lake in the background; notice the splash behind the people to the left.
Ultimately although the dawn of the motoring era brought a different way to reach White Bear Lake, it spelled the end of Wildwood as the streetcar company could no longer subsidize it. With the freedom cars brought people were no longer limited to to distance a horse and buggy could travel or that the streetcars and railroads happened to go to. The roller coaster was moved to the new Excelsior Amusement park and the rest razed in the 1930s. (And the local urban legend that the Excelsior roller coaster became the High Roller at Valleyfair is not true, although the 1925 Carousal was saved and moved ). Today’s amusement parks are generally difficult for people to reach in anything but a car.
Two more early views, from 1902 and 1908
Back on the road, here’s a photo of White Bear Lake’s Main Street in the early days.
Back to the present, a view farther down Lake Avenue. It looks nothing like it did when it was part of Highway 61, all the old pavement has been removed and the northbound lane has been replaced with a bicycle trail.
North of White Bear Lake, the old road rejoins the expressway
Forest Lake
Early on the cutoff to where the road from Minneapolis met the road from St. Paul to Duluth moved from White Bear Lake to Forest Lake. Originally just south of the roundabout here, then to the modern equivalent, the junction of I-35E and I-35W with I-35.
Here’s another roundabout in downtown Forest Lake, Highway 61 northbound goes from right to left
A vintage postcard view of Forest Lake. There’s no “Main Street” in Forest Lake, at least not now, but I believe that they’re referring to Broadway Ave, which would make it the same intersection as above. Nearly all the buildings in the foreground are gone, including the Red Owl at left center. Google Street view shows me they were gone before the roundabout was built, possibly when turn lanes were added to US 61. But Forest Lake seems to not have had the level of impressive two story turn of the last century commercial architecture that characterizes Stillwater, Hastings, or even many smaller towns.
Here’s one from a bit farther back and earlier, showing the Chevy dealership. Old postcards are a fascinating look into a bygone area since they often included vernacular buildings and street scenes and most are public domain due to being published prior to March 1, 1989 without a copyright notice or else being so old the copyright has expired.
Another old postcard. This one was mailed back in 1908 to let family back in Minneapolis know that they had arrived in Forest Lake. Swimming suits were sure a lot different back then. In the late railroad and early motoring era Forest Lake, like White Bear Lake, was a major resort area with a number of now vanished grand resorts and hotels. President Grover Cleveland and future president William McKinley spent time here, as well as some notorious gangsters like Ma Barker and Bugs Moran. During the gangster era it was well known that their presence was tolerated in St. Paul (provided they didn’t engage in criminal activity here) if they needed to lay low for a while. So it’s not surprising they made trips up to the lakes like everyone else. In the days before automobiles and air travel vacations in Florida were unthinkable for most people, so they came to placed like here instead.
Looking at old pictures like this, my initial thought is a morbid “everyone in them is dead now”. But looking further you notice a few things. The obvious is how different swimming suits were then as opposed to today, then notice how some of the women are brave enough to bare their arms while some keep covered, just like some women wear two piece swimming suits today while some wear one pieces. The you think about what these people experienced: The older people could have had fathers that fought to preserve our country in the civil war, while the kids would reaching military age about the time World War I was in full swing. Just about everyone in the picture would have experienced democracy’s struggle for survival in the Great Depression and World War II. And maybe, just maybe, some of the kids lived long enough to experience democracy’s final victory at the fall of the Berlin Wall and the evil empires of communism. For sure they experienced the freedom that automobiles and jet travel brought, able to travel to not just Forest Lake, but to the far corners of our nation in a matter of hours.
Flash forward back to the present and Forest Lake is becoming more quiet, safe, generic suburbia, and the railroad that brought vacationers to town has been replaced with a bicycle trail. The Sunrise Prairie Trail has an overpass one block from the roundabout.
Forest Lake street lights have been (badly) retrofitted with corncob LEDs.
On the north side of Forest Lake the original routing of the highway stayed next to the railroad tracks, on 1st Ave Northwest. Here the original 18 foot pavement is still in service as a local street.
By contrast the old route route north of US 8 has been essentially lost to the elements. This is still highway right-of-way so is fair game for exurban explorers.
Forest Lake to Wyoming
Highway 61 from Forest Lake to Wyoming is the Trooper Glen A. Skalman Memorial Highway. Skalman was gunned down during a traffic stop on I-35 near Forest Lake in 1964, but it was 50 years before being memorialized by this highway; two of his three children were still alive to attend the dedication. The criminal, Charles Brown, was caught in Minneapolis and in a plea bargain was sentenced to 40 years for 2nd Degree murder. Blue Lives Matter!
The town of Wyoming was not named after the state, but both the state and the town were named after Wyoming Valley, PA, a now heavy industrial area near Pittsburgh. In Wyoming, US 61 makes an sharp turn to the west, then abruptly and unceremoniously ends a few blocks later at the interchange with I-35. The reason for this is that after the interstate was built Mn/DOT is constitutionally obligated to maintain trunk highways through certain cities, including White Bear Lake and Wyoming.
So the old route stayed under state control up to Wyoming. Mn/DOT doesn’t like to maintain the old routes parallel to interstates since they no longer have regional significance. They also don’t like to maintain signs for US routes along interstate highways since they cost money and serve no real navigational purpose, so US 61 was cut back to this point with the surviving section north of Duluth was renumbered to MN 61. Wyoming has expanded to touch I-35, so the reason for this stretch of US 61 existing is now gone, and the entire section of US 61 north of downtown St. Paul is a candidate to transfer from state to local jurisdiction.
Although Old 61 continues on ahead, for now we’ll follow currently marked US 61 as it turns to the left for a few blocks before it’s dissapointing end at I-35, then pick up where we left off here in Part Two.
On to Along Old Highway 61 St. Paul to Duluth: A Phototour, Part Two