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.
There was a similar thread (https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=1532.0) 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.
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.
Is VA 91 the only state route that is partially unpaved and has elsewhere a BUSINESS designation?
Mapmikey
QuoteAZ 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
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corcohighways.org%2Fhighways%2Faz%2F273%2F261toend%2F2.jpg&hash=0c1df1bf0f9a0dd24e7417b7829a0bf261d9dece)
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corcohighways.org%2Fhighways%2Faz%2F473%2F260toend%2F3.jpg&hash=21d8af625249aba8addc4dafab4fb34a467598d2)
CO-78 is still unpaved in the Wet Mountains from Pueblo Mountain Park near Beulah to CO-165.
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.
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.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.tapatalk.com%2Fd%2F14%2F07%2F27%2Fpugady9a.jpg&hash=7f7e672b04cd270c6dcc51d969674996d6522712)
Unpacked NC 197 in the snow going down the mountain
iPhone
QuoteVT 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.
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.
QuoteIf 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...
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.
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
A large portion of OR-27 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Route_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).
Quote from: The High Plains Traveler on July 26, 2014, 11:50:17 AM
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.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mesalek.com%2Fcolo%2Fpicts%2Fco394endpvmt.JPG&hash=72ebc59cd6ee7e2194e50b5954361c8c44fd849a)
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mesalek.com%2Fcolo%2Fpicts%2Fco394end.JPG&hash=ac9a5b5df727462901d4c8b13ddd882db597e2fc)
CA 173
Quote from: DesertDog on July 29, 2014, 06:15:16 AM
Quote from: national highway 1 on July 29, 2014, 05:52:20 AM
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.
Quote from: froggie on July 26, 2014, 08:51:55 AM
- 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. :love:
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. :cool:
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.
Quote from: DesertDog on July 31, 2014, 06:40:21 AM
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? :hmmm:
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.
Are there still a lot of them? You'd think in 2015 they'd all be paved.
Of course there is AK 11.
Quote from: texaskdog on April 23, 2015, 12:02:57 PM
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.
NC 90 and NC 197 have unpaved portions...
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.
SR 88 in Arizona is mostly unpaved between Tortilla Flat and the Roosevelt Dam. We drove on it last Sunday.
OR 27 supposedly has an unpaved section.
Quote from: Bickendan on April 23, 2015, 01:25:26 PM
OR 27 supposedly has an unpaved section.
A lengthy one, about 20 miles. Interestingly, it's not over that bad of terrain — sage flats and wide, shallow ravines. But with a paved parallel route nearby, can't imagine ODOT will ever prioritize paving the southern segment.
Quote from: NickCPDX on April 23, 2015, 02:43:31 PM
Quote from: Bickendan on April 23, 2015, 01:25:26 PM
OR 27 supposedly has an unpaved section.
A lengthy one, about 20 miles. Interestingly, it's not over that bad of terrain — sage flats and wide, shallow ravines. But with a paved parallel route nearby, can't imagine ODOT will ever prioritize paving the southern segment.
I think ODOT wants to transfer OR 27 to the county and pick up that paved alignment, so I could see OR 27 moving west in the future.
The infamous Arkansas 220.
Has all of OK 144 been paved? It had gravel sections when it was commissioned/rerouted.
QuoteThere is probably an old thread on this, which I don't have time to look up right now, that will list some others.
We've had at least 3 threads on the forum:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=1532.0 (2009)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=11416.0 (early 2014)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=13040.0 (summer 2014)
Plenty of examples in each.
Quote from: texaskdog on April 23, 2015, 12:02:57 PM
Are there still a lot of them? You'd think in 2015 they'd all be paved.
Of course there is AK 11.
If you include Canada, there's also the Dempster Highway (YT 5/NT 8), which is unpaved.
Quote from: dgolub on April 23, 2015, 07:18:47 PM
If you include Canada, there's also the Dempster Highway (YT 5/NT 8), which is unpaved.
If you stretched the topic to include provincial and territorial highways, you'll find a whole bunch of others in YT and NT (part of YT 4, all of YT 6, part of YT 9, all of YT 10, and parts of NT 1, 5, 6, and 7), a lot of minor numbered red-dirt highways in PEI, and some others in most or all the other provinces. The PEI routes underscore that unpaved highways in Canada are not limited to Arctic or other unpopulated areas.
Speaking of Oklahoma 144, it used to run from US 271 near Nashoba to US 259 near Bethel. It was rerouted to follow an old county road that was partially paved to end at US 259 in Octavia. The old section of OK 144 between Honobia and Bethel reverted to being a county road. The Honobia-Bethel highway is still a gravel road (unless it has recently been paved...) and a very wide and nice gravel road to boot. The Honobia-Octavia highway was in terrible shape the last time I drove it.
Indian Highway, which runs from OK 144 in Honobia to US 271 south of Talihina is an excellent candidate for a state highway. It is a nice 2 lane highway with good pavement markings and signage that looks like a state highway. It has plenty of curves and hills on it to make it a lot of fun. **FANTASY HIGHWAYS ALERT** Indian Highway and old OK 144 could be a southern extension of OK 82.
Colorado Highway 67
Unbeknownst to me, a 9 mile section between Sedalia and Woodland Park is gravel. Being new to the area last fall, some friends and I decided to take a drive through Pikes National Forest....in my new car. Thanks, Google Maps. haha
There's a five-mile stretch of KY 199 in Pike County that's gravel. And I think parts of KY 1679 (the Little Shepherd Trail) are still gravel.
Quote from: bugo on April 23, 2015, 05:44:56 PM
Has all of OK 144 been paved? It had gravel sections when it was commissioned/rerouted.
It was fully paved about 10 years ago.
Quote from: froggie on July 26, 2014, 08:51:55 AM
There was a similar thread (https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=1532.0) 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:
- Minnesota has one partially-unpaved state highway: MN 74 north of Elba. This stretch is on MnDOT's turnback (i.e. decommission) candidate list.
I know MN 243 to Caledonia & MN 65 through Nett Lake were unpaved too. Not sure if they still are.
QuoteI know MN 243 to Caledonia & MN 65 through Nett Lake were unpaved too. Not sure if they still are.
The former was MN 249...it was turned back to Houston County. MN 65 was paved about 15-ish years ago.
Quote from: sandwalk on April 24, 2015, 12:32:32 PM
Colorado Highway 67
Unbeknownst to me, a 9 mile section between Sedalia and Woodland Park is gravel. Being new to the area last fall, some friends and I decided to take a drive through Pikes National Forest....in my new car. Thanks, Google Maps. haha
From what I can tell (and per GSV), the unpaved section is county-maintained as CR 67
I remember driving a few months ago and seeing a Louisiana state highway, numbered in the 3000s, that was dirt AND dead end. :-o Now I hope I can find it again on GSV.
A few hours later...
Ok...I found LA 3239. It seems to be paved in the middle of the whole route. Here is the north end of the paved road: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.080439,-92.143767,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sqDE5NAcZ2TFpDlbFeG--mA!2e0 (https://www.google.com/maps/@32.080439,-92.143767,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sqDE5NAcZ2TFpDlbFeG--mA!2e0)
Here is the south end: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.070974,-92.150377,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sII6uuYz0y93Y9Tylz24kIw!2e0 (https://www.google.com/maps/@32.070974,-92.150377,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sII6uuYz0y93Y9Tylz24kIw!2e0)
It's dirt, it's signed as a state road, but this one isn't a dead end. I know I saw a dirt dead end state road. I'm still looking.
Since one of the older threads got bumped by this topic's creator I decided to merge them.
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 24, 2015, 01:27:38 PM
Quote from: bugo on April 23, 2015, 05:44:56 PM
Has all of OK 144 been paved? It had gravel sections when it was commissioned/rerouted.
It was fully paved about 10 years ago.
Did they repave the whole highway from Honobia to Octavia? The last time I was there even the paved sections were in terrible condition.
NM 506 from US 54 to NM 24.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi907.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fac274%2Fmartinbartlett%2F11150460_10101708787298416_5022218335193992989_n_zpsaadk5vvq.jpg&hash=e7836713ed57ee3e4478cedf427d17e6cca4b48f) (http://s907.photobucket.com/user/martinbartlett/media/11150460_10101708787298416_5022218335193992989_n_zpsaadk5vvq.jpg.html)
Quote from: cjk374 on April 24, 2015, 04:42:56 PM
It's dirt, it's signed as a state road, but this one isn't a dead end. I know I saw a dirt dead end state road. I'm still looking.
Was it LA 1238 (https://www.google.com/maps/@32.00515,-92.379734,3a,75y,240.8h,88t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sBvR3iEhbjTSy7o4MaBg7JQ!2e0)? It is gravel for its entire length and is in the same area of the state as LA 3239. It's also unsigned.
Other unpaved state highways in Louisiana that I am aware of are:
LA 10 (only the portion from the Atchafalaya River to LA 77)
LA 77 (only the portion from LA 77 Spur to LA 10)
LA 973
LA 975
I think that there may be others in the Donaldsonville area, but I have not seen them.