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[Max Rockatansky]

One of the cooler towns I visited in Colorado back in 2016 was Leadville.  Leadville is the County Seat of Lake County and is the incorporated town in Colorado by altitude at 10,152 feet above sea level.  Before the US Route System Leadville was on the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway which essentially ran on the future corridor of US Route 40S.  US 40S split from mainline US 40 in Limon and ended at US 50 in Grand Junction.  Interestingly US 40S never looped back to it's mainline which is probably why it was replaced by US 24 circa 1936.  By 1937 US 6 had been extended from Greeley, CO west to Long Beach, CA which took it to the northern outskirts of Leadville by way of modern CA 91 over Fremont Pass.  US 6 was moved to Vail Pass circa 1940 and strangely multiplexed US 24 west to Grand Junction until 1975.  When I stopped at Leadville back in 2016 I was unaware a BBQ Festival was going on which gave me an opportunity to walk US 24 on Harrison Street:

https://www.gribblenation.org/2020/05/2016-summer-mountain-trip-part-28-us.html

[US 89]

I've seen some discussion someplace (can't remember where) that suggested US 40S may have been originally intended to continue on past Grand Junction and reunite with US 40 near Soldier Summit, Utah. That would have worked with early plans which had US 40 going southwest out of Duchesne and entering the Wasatch Front along what is now the US 6 corridor, before traveling up to Salt Lake via a concurrency with US 91.

Here's a 1926 map that doesn't show US 40S but does have the originally proposed US 40 alignment.

Of course, by 1926 US 40 wound up on a different alignment out of Duchesne that went through Heber and entered Salt Lake from the east, along what was originally planned as US 30.

[Max Rockatansky]

I've seen some discussion someplace (can't remember where) that suggested US 40S may have been originally intended to continue on past Grand Junction and reunite with US 40 near Soldier Summit, Utah. That would have worked with early plans which had US 40 going southwest out of Duchesne and entering the Wasatch Front along what is now the US 6 corridor, before traveling up to Salt Lake via a concurrency with US 91.

Here's a 1926 map that doesn't show US 40S but does have the originally proposed US 40 alignment.

Of course, by 1926 US 40 wound up on a different alignment out of Duchesne that went through Heber and entered Salt Lake from the east, along what was originally planned as US 30.

Looks like the link is coming up with problems on my end.  I'd be curious to see if I can find a 1925 Rand McNally Junior Map of Colorado and Utah.  Those early editions tend to show alignments that close to making the final cut but just not quite...  I can see a south loop of US 40 being viable but the weird terminus probably would have been better off as an X40 from the get-go in 1926.

[US 89]

Link seems to be working fine for me, but here's a screenshot if you can't see it for whatever reason: