I-41

My hometown finally has an interstate highway:

Gov. Scott Walker announced today U.S. 41 has officially been added to the Interstate System as I-41.

Installation of about 3,000 new signs will take place beginning this summer and into November.

The Federal Highway Administration officially approved the interstate designation, a final step in a process begun nearly 10 years ago, according to Walker's office.

Technically, U.S. 41 will still exist but run concurrently with I-41 for its entire route. It begins at the I-94/U.S. 41 interchange about a mile south of the Wisconsin-Illinois border, follows I-94 north to the Mitchell Interchange, I-894 and U.S. 45 around Milwaukee and then joins U.S. 41 north to Green Bay, where it ends at the I-43 interchange.

For anyone growing up in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin, Highway 41 has always been the primary way to get to the area and also the means of escape. To a certain extent the designation doesn't really change that much, but it's always been a bone of contention that the Valley wasn't part of the interstate highway system. The original system looked like this:

Nothing for you, Northeastern Wisconsin

As the highway system was originally developed, the Fox River Valley was left off the main highway system, which was always an odd thing. Many of us speculated that the omission was payback for the trouble that Sen. Joseph McCarthy caused during the 1950s, but there was never any hard evidence of that. McCarthy was from Appleton.

As the system expanded, other roads were added to the system, including I-43, which runs from Beloit to Green Bay via Milwaukee. This took place in the 1970s and became a bone of contention, because it meant that the highway system still left three cities without an interstate -- Appleton, Oshkosh, and Fond du Lac. I-43 runs from Milwaukee to Green Bay while hugging the shore of Lake Michigan. Later on in the 1990s, U.S. Highway 51 was designated as I-39, which now runs north-south down the middle of the state, from Wausau, WI to Bloomington, IL, through towns like Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids, parallel to the Wisconsin River. Still, there was nothing for the Valley towns, even though U.S. 41 has always carried significantly more traffic than either I-39 or I-43.

In the larger scheme of things, whether or not a road is part of the interstate highway system doesn't matter that much. There are giant superhighways in the Los Angeles area that are simply designated as state roads. Still, there is a value in being able to say that your town is important enough to be part of the system. There are plenty of towns that got bypassed when the original system was under construction and the towns that were off the main highway lost access to all the travelers who were passing through the area. This was one of the themes of the Disney/Pixar movie Cars and it represented a real issue. While the Fox River Valley towns hardly withered on the vine in the absence of an interstate highway, people back home always found it troubling. It really bothered my dad, to use one example. Those days are over now. My dad has been gone for nearly 25 years, but somehow, somewhere, I think he's smiling.