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Palm To Pine

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Highway 75 runs north and south through Luverne. It is a major highway in the region. Many years of my life were spent along this road. My first house as an infant and young child was right along the road. My parents built a house along 75 south of town when I was17. My undergrad college in Moorhead was along 75. The University of Manitoba was right along 75, as was my first Winnipeg apartment, although it was called Pembina Highway north of the border. It was called the Palm to Pine Highway, as I think it started in Texas.

On April 15, Highway 75 through the center of Luverne will be closed for several months for resurfacing and new sewer pipes. This is described as progress. They culled 100 year old trees for the project. The MN road department has assured residents that homes and businesses along the route will not be hemmed in. We shall see. It will be huge problem for the marching band festival in September. Much of the diverted traffic will go on the Blue Mound Avenue, just off our street. I know this needs to be done, but what a huge pain to live through.

Any annoying road conconstruction by you this summer? What are your most sentimental highways?

36 thoughts on “Palm To Pine”

  2. I loved Highway 61 on the North Shore from the very first time I ever took it. That was many years ago, before the tunnels were blasted through Silver Creek Cliff. It’s wider, faster, and somewhat straighter now, but I think it’s even more dangerous. People are just in a hurry, and can’t drive the speed limit. They tailgate and make driving that beautiful road really stressful. I’ve gotten to the age in which I just want to slow down and see every tree, rock, and glint of sunlight on the lake. I’m probably the dangerous one, driving the speed limit and all that.

    There is a state bicycle trail that is being built through Northfield and Dundas now. It comes into Northfield on the northeast corner, near the Carleton Arboretum. Then it crosses Highway 19 and follows Spring Creek Road down to the intersection of Wall Street. I know people who live in that neighborhood. They tried and tried to get them to put the trail somewhere else. The City was going to remove old growth pines near one of the two cemeteries there, but the community outcry stopped that massacre. The trail planners didn’t want to harm the golf course, so they directed the trail along Spring Creek Road, removing trees, plants, and landscaping features. A friend of mine had trees and all her landscaping removed. They removed a culvert and put in a larger one. Flow will be accelerated in Spring Creek, and now my friend fears that her house will be in danger of flooding. I’m talking about the million dollar homes near the golf course – one of the most expensive neighborhoods in town. The trail will continue south of there, cut through busy neighborhoods and come out near Hwy 3. It will cross Hwy3, then follow the existing Mill Towns State Trail which comes out a few blocks from where I live. I always support trails. I see them as progress, and as an alternative way of transportation. If you live in Dundas, you can ride a bike to work in Northfield. In Northfield, you can ride a bike just about anywhere, and people do. Soon you will be able to ride a bike from Red Wing to Mankato on this trail. It will join the Sakatah Trail in Faribault. I love trails and trail systems like this, but the way in which they are putting it through Northfield, in the face of lots of unhappy people, surprises me. They could have kept it just east of Northfield and put it through farm land – it would have been much easier and less expensive.

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  3. I had to think a minute about sentimental highways but it came to me. The Honoapiilani Highway (I don’t know what number it holds) that goes west from the Maui airport to the Kaanapali side of the island is sentimental for me. Almost always the drive was accompanied by sunny days, blue skies and sparkling seas. It didn’t hurt that when I was driving this on my own, 95% of the time it was in a convertible with the top down!

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      1. After I retired, YA and went to Maui (before the fire). When we drove the highway, I got a little verklempt thinking it would most likely be the last time I would have that wonderful experience!

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  4. The road construction that will annoy me this summer is already annoying me as it has begun already. The Nicollet bridge over Minnehaha Creek is being re-done… they keep using the word “rehabilitated”. It’s a very small stretch but it’s one of my usual routes and will be closed until fall of 2027. I believe that the parkway underneath will also be closed, although they say the trails will be open. Not sure why it’s safe for hikers/bikers but not for cars. Hmmmmm.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I probably have 3 sentimental highways:

    Highway 87 from Fountain HIlls AZ to Payson AZ, from the foothills into the Superstition Mountains. We drove that many times during our Arizona winters and enjoyed the scenery, the elevation, and the barbecue place in Payson.

    Renee’s Highway 75 from LeMars, IA to Pipestone, MN to see our grandparents. When we were little this was a wonderful adventure. Dad would tell us as we got into Pipestone that Grandma had climbed the watertower to wave at us. She lived across the street from that landmark. Pipestone also had a swimming pool in the park where the family picnicked. That pool was our beloved destination.

    Lincoln Highway from Ames, Iowa to Nevada, Iowa to visit Dad’s family we had our landmarks there, too, including Iowa State University, his cousin’s farm, the railroad, and places he had lived. There is a novel called Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles about a stretch further west.

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  7. hwy 1 in california and in canada are both favorites particularly alberta to bc although the open prairies of canada beartooth pass and going to the sun road in montana are greatest scenic highways in usa
    i dont look ahead to road construction issues . i just deal with it

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  9. When I was a boy and when I first started driving Highway 100 was still called Lilac Way, more of a parkway than a highway, punctuated with parklets that featured stone picnic tables and beehive barbecues that I think were the product of the WPA. The picnic tables and barbecues are all or almost all gone, victims of the wider highway. A few vestiges of the lilacs remain. I can’t say I’m nostalgic, exactly, for the old parkway but I certainly miss the more leisurely way of moving through the world that Lilac Way represented.

    Summer is road construction season and all of it is inconvenient and therefore annoying. Highway 280, which we use frequently, will be closed in the next week or so for who knows how long.

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    1. My aunt lived in North Minneapolis. She and her husband were the original owners of their house under the GI bill. She loved Lilac Way and that was the way the s&h would take to visit her until she sold that house. I smiled when I saw the lilacs blooming along that highway every spring. Sort of a “secret handshake”.

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  10. My sentimental highway would have to be 52 to Decorah from St Paul. We used to take that to get to Iowa City when my parents lived there.

    I’m told it’s much faster to take I35 to 20, then get on I380, but why would I want to go via Waterloo?

    I have never loved driving, so if I have to (and if you’re going to Iowa, you “have to”, I’m going to see fields and barn quilts.

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  12. Well, there’s I-35 for the decades that I drove that to visit my folks in Central Iowa, tho’ toward the end I learned the back roads for a little variety: 65 –> 57 –> 14. (I looked it up.)

    In my early child I see from the map it was Iowa Hwy. 3 from Storm Lake to Sioux City where my grandma lived. Went through Cherokee, and Jacque’s LaMars… I still remember getting to the outskirts of Sioux city and being excited.

    And I’d have to join tim about California Hwy 1, which I took frequently over Devil’s Slide, through Pacifica to San Francisco – it’s one of the most gorgeous drives in the world, I think.

    In the two years I lived in El Granada (near Half Moon Bay), I joined the Save the Coastline gang and fought to keep it a 2-lane rather than expanding to a 4-lane.

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    2. Highway 3 was very familiar to me during my college years, as I would take it from I35 west to my parents. Also took it twice a day from LeMars to the South Dakota border during the breaks when I worked at the nursing home in LeMars.

      Wonder if they ever straightened out the little double jog in it.

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  13. Back when my parents and I drove to Milwaukee to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins before Highway 94, we would take Highway 12, which I think of as the Route 66 of Wisconsin. I think you can still go that way. It will take you through a lot of small towns the freeway bypassed.

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  15. The stretch of highway 35 from Prescott to Alma is a favorite stretch of scenic highway for me. When there is a high bluff on one side and the water on the other, with an occasional train rushing by on the river side, it feels like a classic road trip.

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  18. Beautiful scenery and historic towns on Route 20 in upstate NY. Various roads leading to or going round several Finger Lakes (Otisco, Cayuga, Skaneateles, etc).

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  19. Oh I can’t leave out highway 61 along Lake Superior. Memories of getting to know my husband (thru backpacking trips) and frequent trips after marriage along the North Shore make that drive very special

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