The Duluth (Minn.) News-Tribune has an interesting story about how two Wisconsin towns survived when U.S. 53 bypassed them.
The story starts by comparing them to the fictional Route 66 town of Radiator Springs.
In “Cars,” the latest big-screen creation from Pixar and Walt Disney, a new highway bypasses a dusty desert town called Radiator Springs. And the townsfolk gear up for the major loss of business traffic by… well, pretty much all they do is print up and unfurl a giant banner to welcome weary travelers who never come.
The story line thankfully played out far differently for two of the Northland’s most recently bypassed cities. Freeway traffic started going around Minong in 1997 and around Solon Springs two years later, when U.S. Highway 53 was widened from two lanes to four. The 65 mph ribbon of asphalt was begged for and then celebrated by over-the-road truckers and boat-towing tourists.
The writer even talked to Route 66 expert and author Michael Wallis to get his opinion:
“There are actually a lot of forgotten or lost towns like Radiator Springs out there,” said Michael Wallis, author of “Route 66: The Mother Road.” America’s leading authority on the legendary highway that once carried Dust Bowl caravans, Wallis served as consultant for “Cars” and played the role in the movie of the Sheriff. I reached him by phone at his home in Tulsa, Okla.
Five interstates now parallel Route 66, he said, and “if your town was left without an exit you were doomed. You would die. And even if you had an exit, what you had to do, what the merchants and the people in those communities had to do to continue eking out a living was to figure out a way to lure people off the highway, off the super slab” of chain hotels, cookie-cutter gas stations and fast-food restaurants.
To do that, bypassed communities switched on neon lights, touted their town as home of the best apple pie or generated other gimmicks. They reminded travelers “to taste, to feel, to use their senses and to discover the America we had before we became generic,” as Wallis put it.
But the survival of Minong and Solon Springs should come with a lot of caveats:
- The bypass of U.S. 53 didn’t start until 1997. Route 66 towns were among the first in America to feel the effects of interstate bypasses during the 1950s and ’60s. No one was quite sure what would happen with the completion of those four-lane superslabs. Those Mother Road communities were basically guinea pigs. Seeing the devastation to towns like Glenrio and Seligman, the communities of Minong and Solon Springs knew they had to act to avoid a similar fate and had plenty of time to do so.
- Minong and Solon Springs have the distinct advantage of multiple exits from the four-lane into their towns. Many small Route 66 towns have just one, or in some cases, none at all.
- Minong and Solon Springs spent a lot of money to get those travelers off the superhighway — money that many small Route 66 towns didn’t have. This was also in the days before state grants were available for such economic redevelopment.
In essence, many Route 66 communities were sacrificial lambs — so that future towns would know better how to counteract the effects of the interstate.