Unfinished State Route

[707]

Before you ask, I'm not talking about SR 24 or SR 30. I'm talking about a decommissioned and cancelled route. SR 76. Digging through ADOT Right-of-Way Resolutions, looking closer at Alan Hamilton's old Arizona Roads page, looking at the state highway and milepost GIS Map ADOT has (which shows decommissioned state routes for some reason) and taking a close look at the build of San Manuel Veterans Memorial Boulevard as well as Mine Road near San Manuel, it seems SR 76 did indeed exist and was partially constructed. Only, it never reached Benson. It started at the Tiger Mine, then crossed under an interchange with SR 77 (its only connection to the state highway system) before reaching San Manuel. The state at some point did extend SR 76 southeast of San Manuel to Peppersauce Wash, constructing a bridge over it, then began grading the highway towards the San Pedro River and Pima County Line. Then at some point in the early 1970s, ADOT stopped construction abruptly leaving an unfinished roadbed leading to nowhere. SR 76 in its short 10 mile existence was left in limbo for close to a decade, with ADOT removing the first mile of the highway between Tiger Mine and SR 77 from its inventory in 1974. In 1988, ADOT all out cancelled all plans to build SR 76 to Benson and having cancelled the project decided to abandon the existing section of SR 76 to Pinal County. If you look on Google Earth or satellite on Google Maps, the road through San Manuel and up to the mine is very well graded and often includes adequate shouldering with some impressive bridges for a county road in the middle of nowhere. If you look at where the pavement ends on Veterans Memorial Boulevard, you can see the unfinished section of SR 76 shoot southeast into nothing, dead ending in a sea of hummocks. When I look at it, it really reminds me of the abandoned unfinished section of SR 74 that dead ends pointing towards its tentative terminus at New River. And yes, I'm not making any mistakes here, the ROW Resolutions clearly show ADOT assumed ownership of Veterans Boulevard in 1962 and Google Earth imagery placed alongside resolutions from the late 1960s confirms they extended SR 76 southeast by at least four more miles before the project was abandoned partway through construction. If anything, SR 76 became the unintended southern Arizona equivalent to SR 62, serving only to connect San Manuel and the airport to the Tiger Mine and SR 77.

Take a look for yourselves:
https://www.google.com/maps/@32.5731812,-110.574086,1861m/data=!3m1!1e3
http://azhighwaydata.com/resolutions/?syear=&submit1=Submit&eyear=&crc=&rtnum=76&page=2
https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer
The third link includes a 1973 and a 1981 topoographic map of the San Manuel region, confirming this short 10 mile road was indeed a commissioned section of SR 76.

[707]

I did some further research through ADOT resolutions and available right of way drawings. It appears SR 76 did have about 1.5 miles constructed in Cochise County. Pomerene Road's current configuration from I-10 to the sweeping curve north of Benson matches almost exactly the design plan ADOT ROW documents from 1969 showing what the county road would look like when rebuilt into SR 76. Even some of the resolutions labeled either under SR 76 or I-10 in the area confirm the southern section of Pomerene Road was maintained by the state and referred to internally as a section of SR 76. The documents even suggest SR 76 was signed north/south rather than east/west since Milepost 0 was at I-10 and Pomerene Road while Milepost 53 was near SR 77 at San Manuel.

So far, it appears there were two sections:

Northern Section - Signed:
San Manuel Open Pit to Dead End near Peppersauce Wash

Southern Section - Unsigned:
Last two or so miles of Pomerene Road from the sweeping curve to I-10 in Benson.

And no, I've studied the remaining planned route and ROW documents plus resolutions. It does not appear SR 76 was ever connected between those two points and construction just stopped dead where it was in 1970.

If anything, it looks like they were grading the next section of SR 76 to be completed in 1970 Southeast of Peppersauce Wash, then either:
-The contractor finished the grading work and ADOT never awarded the contract to finish paving the new piece of SR 76
-The contractor packed up halfway through the job, left and just left SR 76 frozen in time.

It's a real shame SR 76 was never completed and that the only road from San Manuel to Benson is primitive. I'm sure it would have been a beautiful drive through the San Pedro Valley.

VS988