Previously we veered off the Old Highway 61 alignment to follow current US 61 to it’s terminus in Wyoming, MN. Now we’ll get back on track along the old highway to Duluth, starting where the old road leaves the current road and continues north.
continuing north of Wyoming we’re now on Old Highway 61, now CSAH (County State Aid Highway) 30. Chisago County has recently switched to blue pentagons, the current national standard for their own county road signs, while the Mn/DOT signs are still the old state standard, the white squares. I expect them to be updated during the next sign replacement.
continuing north of Wyoming we’re now on Old Highway 61, now CSAH (County State Aid Highway) 30. Chisago County has recently switched to blue pentagons, the current national standard for their own county road signs, while the Mn/DOT signs are still the old state standard, the white squares. I expect them to be updated during the next sign replacement.
Starting in Wyoming, Old 61 is sporadically marked with this cool cutout Old US 61 shields
Wyoming to Pine City
Welcome sign for the city of Stacy
In Stacy there is an abandoned section of road and bridge. Many bypassed segments have been reconstructed as local roads and are unrecognizable or just obliterated, But this and other segments survive because there’s no particular reason to spend money removing them.
The plaque is barely legible but it reads:
Minnesota
Highway Depart
Bridge No 4029
1925
Traveling north, North Branch is the next town. Here’s what the junction of Highway 61 and Main Street looked like back in the day.
The streetlights in the picture are GE Form 109. In the 1950s the streetlight manufacturers put out newfangled “clamshell” mercury vapor streetlights, but the ballasts of the time could not fit in the housing, so they mounted on the post tops. Form 109s are odd looking because unlike the other manufacturers, they made use of a NEMA standard housing and could fit a vertical incandescent lamp as well as a horizontal mercury lamp. GE marketed these as an upgrade path; cities could buy economical incandescent streetlights now and then upgrade them to high-tech mercury vapor later.
Here’s the same intersection, looking north today. Note that The building at the left in the previous photo still exists at the right in this one, the old Merchant’s Bank Building, now a cafe.
Most of North Branch’s street lights have been converted into the “fake history” retro styled ones, but here’s one of the mid-century modern ones they missed.
Railroad cars for yet another grain elevator. Can you tell I like old industrial buildings?
In Rush City Constitutional Route 1 originally followed Alger Ave. This didn’t even last into the paved Highway 61 era as the initial 1920s paving projected routed it one block to the west on Bremer Ave, (where there was already a much better bridge) where it remains. The old route is a not-up-to standards trail over a culvert.
On the north side of Rush City there is an abandoned section where a curve was straightened in the early 1960s. This one has reverted to private property so I didn’t get out and go exploring, though I figured the VFW Post wouldn’t mind me taking a quick photo from their parking lot.
North on Rush City some people have turned their farmstead into an homage to Highway 61
Almost immediately on the other side of the road, Rush City Public works has a nice display
On a darker note, a lot of Minnesota’s worst criminals reside along Old Highway 61 at the Rush City prison. I didn’t photograph the prison since it is not visible from public property, but here’s the sign at the turnoff. As I pass them I think about how I chose to follow the law and am traveling freely to wherever I please while they chose a life of crime and are locked up paying for their choices. As I’m writing this revised article in 2020 our crime problem is out of control. Hopefully we can get some more prisons like this built soon.
At the Pine County line the old road officially assumes the number 61, as CSAH 61.
The junction at MN 70 was changed substantially in one of the last pre-intersate improvements. Highway 61 formerly made a jog to the east a half mile following MN 70, resulting in two sharp turns. In the early 1960s this was straightened out, leaving behind sections of the old road. The straight sections remain as local access roads- Fairview and Freedom Aves, but there were curves at each intersection that have been obliterated (west) or abandoned and just about reclaimed by the elements (east).
Old Old Highway 61, Fairview Ave, with New Old Highway 61 in the background.
Pine City
At the southern outskirts of Pine City, one of several motels from the pre-interstate days that somehow still survives. Having stayed at a number of them and talked to the owners, it seems small motels like this can survive if they’re run mainly by the family without employees. One person will hang out in the office; there’s either the full living quarters behind the front office or at least a bed, TV, and computer while the other does chores around the house and maintenance around the property. Cleaning is done by an outside service rather than having housekeepers on the payroll. During the winter the owners might live someplace else and either rent out rooms cheaply on a long-term basis or simply close down. They were also a popular subject for postcards; they’d print up a bunch and leave them in a drawer for people to use as a form of promotion, these now provide a fascinating view of bygone age of motoring.
Closeup of the sign. One of the “Gails” is missing even though her feet are still there above the “E”. It’s a sad sign of our times that the motel advertises “24 hour security”, where people are more worried about crime than if it has a TV set and pool.
Inside Pine City there existed another motel under various names- the Midway Motel, The Schwartzwald Motel, and finally the Old Oak Inn. The layout was a bit different in that you drove though a covered passageway in front of the office, then the motel faced away from the busy highway towards a grove of oak trees. The site is now unrecognizable as a Casey’s General Store so taking a photo showing nothing but the side of that would have been pointless.
Instead here’s a view of the old highway in Pine City with a giant flag in front of a strip mall. Pine City is the county seat of Pine County, despite being on the extreme southern end. Pine County is also one of the larger counties in the heavily populated southern half of Minnesota, leading to friction between the northern and southern halves over allocations of county resources. In 2000 there was a referendum to split the county, basically expelling the northern half into a new “Pioneer County”, the first new county in Minnesota since Lake of the Woods County split from Beltrami County in 1923. The referendum was defeated with a 78% “No” vote, nearly all of the “Yes” votes coming from the Pine City area.
North of Pine City was a random pretty tree. This was a terrible year for fall colors so my options for photographing pretty trees were quite limited
Hinckley
Most travelers know Hinckley as the place with the casino, Tobie’s bakery, and a place to stop to feed yourself and feed your car at the usual chains at the interstate exit, but the town’s identity is tied to the fire of 1894. For 40 years centered on the turn of the last century the clear-cutting of the north woods was in full swing, and loggers simply left the worthless branches and leaves, the “slash”, on the ground. This was naturally extremely flammable and eventually the inevitable happened, with the fire burning 300 square miles including the entire town. There were 418 official fatalities but the toll was certainly higher due to incomplete record keeping- just about everyone in the country lived “off the grid” in those days.
The Hinckley fire museum, in a former railroad depot, is one of those places that you see signs for on the interstate but don’t stop.
Besides the fire museum Old Highway 61 stays in the old railroad corridor, now the Munger State Trail, and isn’t particularly interesting , so I ventured into town a bit, to the right of Old Highway 61. The downtown is halfway between what I’d term as “decrepit” and “lively”.
By the interstate exit is Cassidy’s Gold Pine Restaurant, that’s almost as old as the interstate itself. I-35 from Hinckley to Sandstone was the first segment of the interstate to replace the old road. Here’s a vintage postcard view and a today photo.
Here’s the view today from the reverse angle, with a new sign and crossover SUVs in front instead of full sized sedans.
Across the interstate is Tobie’s Bakery as well as the highway commercial strip. The price of gasoline isn’t too bad but fast food is expensive relative to other places so I normally just get a carmel-pecan roll and coffee from Tobie’s and stop for fast food at one of the other towns if I’m hungry on road trips down I-35. Heading west from the interstate, as the fast food restaurants and gasoline stations end, there is Lutheran Memorial Cemetery, home to the Hinckley Fire Monument marking the mass grave of 248. Here’s a postcard mailed in 1911 by a family on their way up to Cass Lake, and today, taken from a slightly different angle since standing in the middle of what is now Highway 48 is no longer safe.
The monument mentions 418 deaths, but the actual toll was probably much higher considering what we would now call living “off the grid” was common in the countryside back then. There’s also a veteran’s memorial at the cemetery.
Farther down is the casino, but that’s not of interest to me so I doubled back along MN 48 to pick up Old Highway 61 again and headed north out of town. Leaving town is a small parking area with a plaque.
Hinckley to Sandstone
An old hotel sign that has seen better days. Rather than repair the neon tubing they simply installed floodlights, but now the message itself is wearing off. I have a love of neon signs. Too many of our classic neon signs- the 1st Bank sign, the Grain Belt sign, are being desecrated with LEDs. Or else simply removed. Remember the classic neon animated neon ValleyFair sign or the Holiday Inn signs? LEDs should be used as their own art form, not to mimic incandescent bulbs or neon tubing just as an electronic synth should be used for it’s own unique sound, and should not be used to mimic violins or piccolos.
Here’s a farmstead north of Hinckley with a “St. Croix Scenic Byway” sign. At one point it was envisioned that the entire state would be converted to agriculture, but the acidic soil in the northeastern part of the state provided proved ill-suited, and most of it has returned to pine forests.
Sandstone
Sandstone has a sign made of stone
Although it never carried Highway 61, on the east end of town is the Kettle River bridge. This is the last remaining deck truss bridge on the trunk highway system. MN 123 was added to the trunk highway due to political reasons in the 1933 “Great Expansion”, (See A History of Minnesota’s Highways: Part Two) and the first crossing was a decrepit old wagon bridge. Building a new bridge on such an unimportant route wasn’t a priority, and it wasn’t until after World War II, with additional pressure from the federal government that needed to get supplies to Sandstone Prison. Like the Rush City prison, I chose not to loiter around taking pictures because I had no desire to have a conversation with security and besides it’s not particularly interesting. The prison is notable as holding Vietnam draft-dodgers as well as Tim Allen doing a stint here in 1979 for drug trafficking. It’s now classified as low security so criminals here tend to be the older, nonviolent types, like an accountant doing a few years for some creative bookkeeping and fictional tax returns.
North of Sandstone the 61 Motel still exists. Here’s what it looked like back in the day.
The main difference is a new neon sign replacing the old back-lit fluorescent sign. Back in the day you often chose a motel for the night based on how attractive the sign and property were, not making a reservation on the internet in advance or checking out TripAdvisor. The kids will be happy with the color, cable TV, none of that old fashioned black and white over the air stuff.
Sandstone to Mahtowah
North of Sandstone there are a series of small towns, some of which have nice welcome signs:
The road though General C.C. Andrews State Forest. General Christopher Columbus Andrews was a Civil War general and the state’s first fire warden. As you can see, despite the “clear” forecast the weather started significantly clouding up at times.
And a nice sign for Sturgeon Lake.
Some folk art north of Sturgeon Lake
I drove straight through Moose Lake; Old Highway 61 goes through a nondescript commercial strip, but here’s a railroad trestle on the north side. The nearby Moose Lake State Park is also nondescript. Yes, it’s a nice lake in the new growth forest in the north woods, but just another nice lake in the north woods. Unlike parks like say Jay Cooke, Interstate, Banning, or Itasca there’s nothing that really jumps out at you.
Mahtowa
Mahtowa is a tiny unincorporated town, but the name is interesting, from the Dakota “mahto” and Ojibwe “makwa”, both meaning bear. Originally the road went through the center of town, but it was soon bypassed to the west, then of course the bypass was bypassed with I-35. Here’s the old road in town:
New Old US 61, the Mahtowa bypass
A couple of miles later, Old Highway 61 crosses I-35, we’re now back on the east side.
Once you’re on the Canadian Shield geographical region the scenery gets rougher and the scattered farms all but disappear.
After following I-35 on the east side for a few miles, I reached the junction of MN 210. Here the old route veers east through Carlton then north to Cloquet. The more direct path I-35 takes did not predate the interstate. Here’s another motel at the junction of Old Highway 61 and MN 210
Here’s a paper mill in Carleton
In Carlton, Old Highway 61 takes a sharp turn to the north on the way to Cloquet
Cloquet has the Frank Lloyd Wright designed gas station. The intial concept was hoses would drop from the canopy, but this was not allowed by code. The second floor lounge was to wait while your car was being refueled.
. Before the interstates were built, there was an effort to build expressways on key corridors. Highway 61 was built from the St. Paul city limits to White Bear Lake and from Cloquet to Duluth. In some cases these expressways got overlaid with the interstates, but here it was bypassed, resulting in an expressway provided for only 5000 vehicles a day. eventually one of the two bridges was removed at the city limits, leaving the remaining bridge for all traffic
But farther west, both lanes still exist.
Duluth
Closer to Duluth, there’s a rest area where since the beginning of the motoring era there was a stop here to admire the view. Later it was rebuilt in the WPA era, but as the freeway directly replaced the expressway it was now illegal and dangerous to stop here. The ruins are still visible though, and there is a modern version with the same view in the form of the Thompson Hill Rest area.
The Thompson Hill Rest area, higher up on the hill, is the replacement and provides the same view.
Beyond the rest area, part of the old, pre-expressway road has been obliterated and cannot be followed, so I got on the freeway. Cody street is where the old expressway diverges from I-35 and enters Duluth. As the former expressway entrance into Duluth, Cody Street is grossly overbuilt for current needs. This is at the height of Duluth’s rush hour, and I had the road pretty much to myself.
Backtracking up the hill from Cody Street and I-35 exists a commemorative plaque, a pre-interstate motel and a pre-expressway stretch of road, maintained as an informal hiking trail by area residents.
Plaque commemorating the highway. This is literally smack in someone’s front yard.
The Allyndale Motel back in the day
For most of the duration of Old Highway 61, the route followed Cody Street, Grand Ave, Carlton Street, and Superior Street, but for a brief time from 1978 to 1989 it was on the one way pair of 2nd and 3rd Streets downtown. Here’s a railroad trestle on Carlton Street.
Now we’re in the downtown area. Here are some old postcards of Superior Street over time
And Superior Street Today
nd a closeup of the streetlights
In probably the best outcome for urban freeways, I-35 did get built downtown, so city streets aren’t burdened with the horrible congestion costs of not having it, and people in cars don’t have a slow, tedious drive. Yet the freeway is mostly out of sight, out of mind for people not in cars. The freeway goes through a series of highway lids with new parkland connecting the waterfront with downtown. Just across the lids from here is the Aerial Lift Bridge. Since there’s a Duluth city ordinance requiring all articles about Duluth to include a shout out to it with at least one photo, I’ll get that out of the way now.
Finally we’re where I-35 ends. Neighborhood opposition prevented the freeway from reaching the existing expressway northeast of the city, making motorists forever put up with the tedium of using London Road on trips to the North Shore. Old Highway 61 comes in from the right, intersects with I-35, and then becomes current Highway 61, London Road, off to the left. After all day driving and taking pictures, it was time to head home on I-35. Taking the freeway all the way, I arrived home in just over two hours including a stop for food and fuel.
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This article original published on streets.mn as “Along Old Highway 61 to Duluth, A Phototour, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, with slightly different text, two fewer pictures, and smaller sized pictures. Vintage postcard content is public domain due to being published before 1987 without proper copyright notice. Original content published only or duplicated on the streets.mn series available under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US. Copyright asserted on content exclusive to North Star Highways.