more photos from my trip across the Rocky Mountains several times – in the dead of winter, of course!
old US-91 in Idaho. Between the full moon and the snow, it was bright enough to drive without headlights!
Interstate Ninety. Appropriately, I’m doing ninety. The storm behind on top of me, threatening wind and rain and snow, is doing ninety as well. This oughta be fun, especially since I am obligated to stop at every exit to look for old signs…
Snowfall in the canyons along old 91. Somewhere around McCammon if I recall correctly.
Dawn. Snowplows hard at work. We’re now on US-93, having crossed from US-91 on US-26 in the middle of the night.
Did I mention we’re crossing the Rockies in winter?
Approaching the mountain pass. Yep, it is totally snowed over.
Lost Trails Pass, 1945? Nope, I just did something badly wrong with a layer in Photoshop and I liked the result. Looks like some dodgy old film photo!
Our first Montana sign. We’re not even in Montana yet!
There we go.
Montana has reasonable speed limits. This is for a winding two-lane mountain road!
All highway signs buried under six feet of snow, for your convenience.
It is recommended that you do not exceed 25… but we won’t cite you for anything under 70 90.
What’s this, the skies clear up?
A house on the hill.
An old US-93 alignment yields this truss bridge.
And here, as promised, is Inflatable Biker Santa!
What’s this about old US-10? Someone never got the memo that the road isn’t called that anymore. There are a bunch of very recent US-10 signs at the Missoula airport.
Interstate shields with the state name are uncommon in Montana. They’d be rare if the state bothered to take down the old signs, but they don’t. Here is one in Missoula. This gantry dates back to 1975. Gotta love the state name … with the missing letter and a half!
Somewhat old signs in Missoula. Note the custom Montana font – especially noticeable on the “S” in BUSINESS.
Back on I-90, and the snowstorm is here. We’ll be racing it for at least a hundred miles.
If we bear down and head east, we can outrun it.
This is not a night shot – this is what happens when I fudge up the camera settings because I’ve turned back west, into the teeth of a raging gale, and I have about three seconds to take this picture before I am swept off the road.
Oh deer.
Somewhere in there, the sun has set on us. That bright object straight ahead to the east is the moon rising.
Auto-focus fail. Too bad, because this was a great 1960s US-287 shield, complete with rare Series A font. When I went back to find it in December, 2009, it had been replaced. The shield likely dated back to 1965, when US-287 was extended northward from Yellowstone.
A transitional style – wider fonts, but still keeping the square shield. 1970s.
Old US-10 heading to the moon.
Here is a nice 90 shield that time has forgotten. It is a 36×36 example (most of the ones we have seen are 24×24) – meaning it was once intended to be posted on the freeway itself. Instead, it was placed at a junction, and therefore will likely survive a lot longer than the mainline example I posted above.
Merry Christmas from US-10 in Bozeman.
US-10 is long gone, but its branch route, US-310, remains – and, in fact, begins here, branching off from old, unsigned US-10. Don’t mind the interstate shield with no state name – pay attention instead to the secondary route with the arrowhead design. I have no idea why Montana doesn’t use the cool arrowhead for its primary state routes, and the boring square for the secondary ones.
This classic 1961-spec US-310 shield is still around. Note the “west” banner. US-310 is north-south but here it happens to be running west for a few blocks before it terminates, though it came north from Wyoming.
Business 90 in Billings. Dig the small numbers – someone put 7″ digits on this shield where 8″ would be the 1958 standard. Here is where I-94 branches off I-90, and heads as far east as Windsor, Ontario Detroit, Michigan. We will next follow I-94… all the way to the North Dakota border, just so in daylight we can retrace our path and head back west on old US-10.
next up: I-94 and old US-10 in the eastern half of Montana, with perhaps a photo of North Dakota or two… and then, down to Wyoming and Colorado.
Too bad you didn’t find (maybe they don’t exist) some of the signs dating back to when MT-287 became U.S. 287. At the time Montana used the circle on a black square background for its state route markers. And on some of these signs, instead of replacing them, someone fashioned a U.S. highway stencil that just fit inside the circle, and painted the portions of the circle outside the stencil black. Yes, it looked quite clunky and had terrible nighttime reflectivity. But look at the money it saved! I saw a number of these when I spent the summer of 1970 in Montana.
I have never seen Montana use a circle shield – or repaint a circle to a US route. Any photos you may have from this era would be greatly appreciated!
I’m digging the typeface used for numerals on the older Montana US signs. Looks familiar to me but I can’t place it.
looks a lot like Blue Highway, that font that circulates out there that’s kind of a road font but isn’t quite.
The MT -> U.S. 287 signs are a perfect example of what, if I’d only known there would be an internet and a forum to share my interest, I’d have photographed waaay back then. While Montana was already using the current design route marker in 1970, I’m pretty sure there were other routes marked with the circle as well. It may have been a short-term transition design from the Route /xx/ Montana version to the current. Obviously, 287 is the only route that would have had the state-to-U.S. conversion with the same number. For that matter, the only one I can think of from any state; usually the changes go the other way (U.S. -> state).
As for that US-10 shield, I guess some nostalgics at MT DOT (and/or at various local counties/municipalities departments) want to revive US-10 in the West. ;-)
95 is another example of a state-to-US upgrade. Arizona 95 south of Quartzsite got the upgrade. I think 93 as well? A lot of US routes were extended into Arizona and kept their numbers because of how AZ picked their numbering system in 1927.
I always thought that the arrowhead signage was for Indian (reservation) routes.
in various other states, yes (Arizona and South Dakota come to mind offhand) but in Montana the arrowhead is a state secondary route. See here:
http://shields.aaroads.com/show.php?image=MT19484231&view=3