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[bessertc]

Hey All,

After working on it for a couple weeks, I've finally uploaded a new animated map showing the evolution of the highway routes around the Greater Houghton Lake & Higgins Lake area (including Roscommon, Saint Helens and Grayling areas) in north-central Lower Michigan, from 1939 to the present. I've been slowly updating and revising the route listings for US-27, M-76 and related routes in the area and I found it would likely just be easier to make a set of maps showing the changes, because a picture is truly worth a thousand words in this case. (Trying to describe the short but complex history of M-169 at Houghton Lake Heights in just text is very difficult!) The map is online and the attendant revisions to the route listings will come in the next several days. You can find the map on the Michigan Highways website at:

• Houghton & Higgins Lakes Area Trunkline History Map, 1939-Present

Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated and welcomed!

Thanks much,
Chris

[Terry Shea]

Awesome work!

[usends]

Very nicely done!  Did you mimic the graphic style of MDOT's official state highway maps?

[formulanone]

I like those animations; well done!

[Henry]

That's a great presentation indeed!

[bessertc]

Very nicely done!  Did you mimic the graphic style of MDOT's official state highway maps?

Yes. There's a bit of a backstory... Back in about 2004, I was utterly disgusted with MDOT's digital "re-draw" of the 1969 H.M. Gousha-created "analog" map that I'd grown up with, so I was bound-and-determined to make my own digital Michigan highway map that was faithful to the Gousha-created style (to an extent), yet updated. This languished until 2011-12 when I took official State of Michigan GIS data and actually created a new highway map of the entire state (and surrounding areas)—something that hadn't been done since 1934. (The previous "new" maps over the years had just been "re-draws" of the old maps, including the current map, which was just "drawn" over top of a scan of the 1969-base: errors, warts and all!) I actually bumped into the head of the MDOT mapping section a couple years later and told her of my accomplishment and she couldn't believe I had used their own GIS data to make a statewide highway map and mimicked the old 1969 Gousha style, to boot! There was some talk of maybe incorporating my work into their map, but that discussion fizzled after she took a leave of absence and I've never re-connected with the MDOT mapping folks since. I've also started work on a "city inset"-scale map of the entire state which visitors to my site have seen before (examples: Possible M-28 Reroute near Marquette from c.2004, and route maps of M-93, Former M-114, M-231, and M-343).

It's been fun making maps that are more MDOT-ish than even MDOT can make these days! I had one person I know from MDOT ask me "where the hell I got those maps from" awhile back, because she couldn't figure out where they came from. I smiled and she figured out quickly where I "got" them from... 

[GaryV]

Didn't the older MDOT maps have the freeways in dark red, instead of blue-green like now?

[hobsini2]

Great animation. I love that kind of stuff.

Just a curious question Chris. Is there a reason why you have not updated the Wisconsin Hwys page in 5 years?

[Terry Shea]

Great animation. I love that kind of stuff.

Just a curious question Chris. Is there a reason why you have not updated the Wisconsin Hwys page in 5 years?

Not trying to speak for Chris, but I would guess he's already done about 10 lifetimes worth of work on Michigan Highways and keeping it updated.

[bessertc]

Didn't the older MDOT maps have the freeways in dark red, instead of blue-green like now?

On the "analogue" version of the map, the freeways were red-filled parallel bands of black-trimmed lines as was the H.M. Gousha standard of the day. They went with blue-filled with the transition to digitally because, as they stated, it more closely conforms to "modern mapping conventions." By that, I think they meant that Rand McNally and the folks that produce the National Geographic and, at the time, American Map road atlases had settled on using blue for freeways. Personally, I like it, because it allows me to use the red-filled parallel bands of black-trimmed lines for controlled-access expressways and differentiate from the fully limited-access freeways with the blue coloring on maps I personally make.

[bessertc]

Great animation. I love that kind of stuff.

Just a curious question Chris. Is there a reason why you have not updated the Wisconsin Hwys page in 5 years?

Not trying to speak for Chris, but I would guess he's already done about 10 lifetimes worth of work on Michigan Highways and keeping it updated.

Thanks Terry. That is true, but I do feel rather guilty for letting updates to the Wisconsin site lag for so long. Between the amount of content I've been adding to the Michigan site coupled with being forced into this whole "adulting" thing over the past couple decades and then deciding to adopt a child (I guess having one of our own wasn't enough?) has had an impact on my free time...   

I promise I'll find time to put some more effort back into the Wisconsin side in the future!

[hobsini2]

Great animation. I love that kind of stuff.

Just a curious question Chris. Is there a reason why you have not updated the Wisconsin Hwys page in 5 years?

Not trying to speak for Chris, but I would guess he's already done about 10 lifetimes worth of work on Michigan Highways and keeping it updated.

Thanks Terry. That is true, but I do feel rather guilty for letting updates to the Wisconsin site lag for so long. Between the amount of content I've been adding to the Michigan site coupled with being forced into this whole "adulting" thing over the past couple decades and then deciding to adopt a child (I guess having one of our own wasn't enough?) has had an impact on my free time...   

I promise I'll find time to put some more effort back into the Wisconsin side in the future!

I hear you Chris. I was just wondering. You do a fantastic job with the layout and content of both pages.

[bessertc]

Great animation. I love that kind of stuff.

Just a curious question Chris. Is there a reason why you have not updated the Wisconsin Hwys page in 5 years?

Not trying to speak for Chris, but I would guess he's already done about 10 lifetimes worth of work on Michigan Highways and keeping it updated.

Thanks Terry. That is true, but I do feel rather guilty for letting updates to the Wisconsin site lag for so long. Between the amount of content I've been adding to the Michigan site coupled with being forced into this whole "adulting" thing over the past couple decades and then deciding to adopt a child (I guess having one of our own wasn't enough?) has had an impact on my free time...   

I promise I'll find time to put some more effort back into the Wisconsin side in the future!

I hear you Chris. I was just wondering. You do a fantastic job with the layout and content of both pages.

Well, I appreciate the gentle prod! It prompted me to take a look at the site and I was perplexed why the (redesigned) pages were rendering as semi-transparent! After some time, I was able to find a 50% value in the CSS template that was causing the problem, which apparently hadn't caused any issues in the past, so I changed that and uploaded the so-far-redesigned pages so that they all display at 100% opaque! I'll definitely make some time to update the Wisconsin site soon, though...