Un-paved State Highways

[DesertDog]

The county route thread had me thinking and this might be something a little bit more west coast oriented but what numbers/signed state highways have you guys run into out there that aren't paved or aren't paved for the entirety of the route? 

A couple that come to mind from my own encounters:

AZ 88  -  About half paved from Apache Junction to Tortilla Flat.  The other half is 1 1/2 lane dirt winding above the Salt River Dam Lakes to Roosevelt Dam, this is known as the "Apache Trail."
AZ 288 -  This is paved for a little while from it's southern terminus but becomes dirt the majority of the route to Young, AZ.
AZ 366 -  About 70% of the Route is paved as it climbs Mount Graham but becomes dirt once you get close to the Mount Graham Observatory.
AZ 473  -  This becomes unpaved near the southern terminus near Hawely Lake.
AZ 273  -  The last time I was up at Sunrise this route was still signed but gravel past the resort.  It looks like on Google Maps that there was a paving construction going on at the AZ 261 terminus.

I'm sure there are others out there that I can't think of off the top of my head in Utah and New Mexico.  There are some old ones that Nevada dropped like 3a and 8a but I'm curious to see what everyone can come up with.  Alaska more than little bit implied of course.

[froggie]

There was a similar thread several years ago near the beginning of the forum.  There's some listed there, including a discussion on what the last unpaved US highway was.  The topic has also been brought up in other threads over the years.

To reiterate a few:

- Vermont has one partially-unpaved state highway:  VT 65 between VT 12 and the center of Brookfield.

- Minnesota has one partially-unpaved state highway:  MN 74 north of Elba.  This stretch is on MnDOT's turnback (i.e. decommission) candidate list.

- As Mapmikey noted in the old thread I referenced above, Virginia has one partially-unpaved primary route:  VA 91 in part of Tazewell County.

[oscar]

In Alaska, state routes 2, 5, 6, 8, 10 (both segments, since the Chitina segment technically includes the unpaved road to McCarthy), and 11 are unpaved in significant part, as is part of one of AK 7's four segments.  That's about half of Alaska's numbered routes.  Alaska also has a lot of unnumbered state highways, many of which are also unpaved.

Nothing in Hawaii.  When the route network was split between state and county routes in the 1960s, the state made a point of dumping all the unpaved routes on the counties, except for a few that were about to be paved.

UT 261 (including the famous Moki Dugway).

VA 91, of all places.

Since froggie just posted the previous thread on this subject, I'll stop there.

[Mapmikey]

Is VA 91 the only state route that is partially unpaved and has elsewhere a BUSINESS designation?

Mapmikey

[corco]

AZ 273  -  The last time I was up at Sunrise this route was still signed but gravel past the resort.  It looks like on Google Maps that there was a paving construction going on at the AZ 261 terminus.

273 and 473 are paved to their termini as of May 2012

[The High Plains Traveler]

CO-78 is still unpaved in the Wet Mountains from Pueblo Mountain Park near Beulah to CO-165.

[SectorZ]

There are 2 more in Vermont.

VT 35 in Athens for a couple miles. This stretch is not state-maintained.

VT 58 thru Hazens Notch, west of Lowell, which is maybe 7 miles of gravel. This I believe is state-maintained.

[WashuOtaku]

North Carolina Highway 197 has a section still unpaved at the Brunswick-Yancey County Line.  It's a rather twisty road with little traffic; it may not be the entire highway, but it's the heart of it.

[Arkansastravelguy]

Unpacked NC 197 in the snow going down the mountain


iPhone

[froggie]

VT 35 in Athens for a couple miles. This stretch is not state-maintained.

VT 58 thru Hazens Notch, west of Lowell, which is maybe 7 miles of gravel. This I believe is state-maintained.

Technically, these are true as well, though I didn't include them because neither of them is state-maintained.  VTrans does not maintain VT 58 west of VT 100/Lowell.

If we're including town-maintained routes, then there is also a stretch of VT 121 that is unpaved.

[MillTheRoadgeek]

If SRs count, Braddock Rd (SR 705) turns into a dirt road before reaching US 15. This may change soon, due to developers paving the road however.

[froggie]

If SRs count

I don't think we should include VA secondary routes, as there are literally hundreds (if not into the thousands) of them that would qualify...

[roadman65]

I would say that part of TX 100 on South Padre Island counts as its northern (eastern) segment, gets covered by sand, so at many times the road is buried beneath an extension of the sand dunes along the side of the road. Therefore when the park service (or whoever has jurisdiction over maintenance over it) does not get the chance to sweep the road or remove the sand, you are driving on sand and not asphalt.  Although it does not count, it still in a way does as its a defacto unpaved road or acting as one in the meantime.

[DandyDan]

Nebraska has 4:
1. Nebraska Highway 18 going west from US 283 in Gosper and Frontier Counties
2. Nebraska Highway 65 going south from NE 8 near Pawnee City to the Kansas border
3. Nebraska Highway 67 going north from NE 2 at Dunbar to US 34 west of Union
4. The real odd one, NE S67C, a spur highway going west from the previously mentioned segment of NE 65.  I have no idea why this road would have ever been part of the state highway system.

As far as I'm concerned, I see no need to keep any of these state highways in the highway system

[doorknob60]

A large portion of OR-27 is unpaved. The unpaved section has almost no usage, and any reason to pave it is negated by the existance of a paved route between US-20 and Prineville a bit to the west, Millican Rd (currently a county road).

[Milepost61]

CO-78 is still unpaved in the Wet Mountains from Pueblo Mountain Park near Beulah to CO-165.

As is a section of CO-394 near Craig.

[national highway 1]

CA 173

[oscar]

CA 173

Does Caltrans even maintain that portion anymore?

Edit:  Appears Caltrans doesn't as of 2011.

I drove CA 173's disconnected segments earlier today.  The eastern one, the road is paved all the way to the closure gate and a little beyond.  The western one is all paved, unless you insist on counting as part of CA 173 a few hundred feet of bad/no pavement between the End Pavement sign and its closure gate.

CA 270 is sometimes thought to include about three miles between the end of pavement and Bodie State Park, but the unpaved park road covering those three miles is neither Caltrans-maintained nor part of the state highway system.

[Molandfreak]

- Minnesota has one partially-unpaved state highway:  MN 74 north of Elba.  This stretch is on MnDOT's turnback (i.e. decommission) candidate list.

Aww, what a shame. It's so unique and a very pretty drive.

It should also be noted that MN 1 and MN 65 both had unpaved segments until relatively recently. MN 1 was rerouted on the paved CSAH 22 in the late '90s and MN 65's last gravel segment was paved in 2001 or so.

It should also be noted that the formerly unpaved portion of MN 1 has since been paved by St. Louis County. So if MN/DOT really wanted to re-swap, MN 1 could return to the old alignment without having an unpaved portion.

[oscar]

But what happened to the dirt portion of 173 that prompted the closure?  I vaguely remember hearing something about an eroded section that was difficult to keep from falling apart? 

Something like that -- some parts less than two lanes wide, with steep embankments and no guardrails, on which people were getting killed.  But the real problem might've been the unpaved road section no longer served a useful purpose (it was originally built for the long-completed Lake Arrowhead dam construction project), and Caltrans didn't want to spend the money needed to keep it more or less safe. 

[texaskdog]

Are there still a lot of them?  You'd think in 2015 they'd all be paved.

Of course there is AK 11.

[oscar]

Are there still a lot of them?  You'd think in 2015 they'd all be paved.

Of course there is AK 11.

Lots of others in Alaska, even if you ignore unnumbered state highways. In particular, parts of AK 2, AK 5, AK 6, AK 8, and AK 10.

But there are some in the lower 48 too, starting with parts of VA 91 and UT 261 (the famous Moki Dugway).

There is probably an old thread on this, which I don't have time to look up right now, that will list some others.

[Mapmikey]

NC 90 and NC 197 have unpaved portions...

[corco]

About 50% of Montana's secondary system is unpaved, though probably 80% of the unpaved secondary system is maintained by the county or feds and not the state.

In terms of primary highways, WA 165, ID 7, ID 64, MT 38, AZ 288 and AZ 366 come to mind immediately as having unpaved portions.

[Pink Jazz]

SR 88 in Arizona is mostly unpaved between Tortilla Flat and the Roosevelt Dam.  We drove on it last Sunday.