West end: Portland, Oregon Length 6,534 km | East end: Portland, Maine Constructed 6 January 1919 | |
Existed: January 6, 1919 – 1930s States: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine | ||
The Theodore Roosevelt International Highway was a transcontinental North American highway, from the era of the auto trails, through the United States and Canada that ran from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. Its length was about 4,060 miles (6,530 km).
Contents
Map of Theodore Roosevelt Hwy, Danville, VT 05828, USA
Route description
The highway left Maine through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont to cross Lake Champlain by ferry into New York. The highway went through Ontario from Niagara Falls to Windsor and from Detroit through Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Duluth, Minnesota, and then through North Dakota and Montana. The highway passed through northern Idaho and Yakima, Washington, to follow the Columbia River into Oregon. U.S. Route 2 (US 2) was numbered along similar routing through the United States in 1926, although neither Portland was included. The eastern end of the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway was designated US 302 in 1935, and is still known locally as the Roosevelt Trail.
In Michigan, the highway had a northern loop route in the Upper Peninsula. Between St. Ignace and Wakefield, the northern route followed what is now M-123 and M-28 while the southern route followed the rough path of today's US 2.
History
The highway was designated as a memorial following Theodore Roosevelt's death on January 6, 1919. Michigan completed its section of the highway in the middle of 1926. A 56-mile (90 km) portion of the highway over the continental divide through Marias Pass in northwestern Montana was not completed until 1930. Automobiles were carried over the pass in Great Northern Railway cars until the highway was finished. Dedication ceremonies for the full route were held in Montana four months after the completion of the highway. The name has fallen into disuse after the 1930s with the 1926 designation of the United States Numbered Highway System that replaced much of its routing with numbered highway designations.