Jefferson Highway "Pine to Palm '09" to stop in Menahga
Written by REBECCA KOMPPA   

The 1916 Sociability Run for the Jefferson Highway at its stopover in Menahga. The Menahga Journal
editor estimated that 500 people attended the event.


We have all heard the old proverb, “What goes around, comes around.”  The proverb can have several meanings, but one is that things have a way of starting one way, going through phases of change, only to eventually return back to the way it started out.

Recently my husband and I made a journey up north. As we traversed merrily along the highway in our automobile, we saw more adventurous travelers making the same journey on bicycles. Long distance biking is a trend gaining in popularity – again.

I say again because in the 1880’s biking was quite “the rage.”  The biking enthusiasts wanted good country roads to ride on and they are credited with spearheading the Good Roads Movement.

Horatio Earle, known as the Father of Good Roads, said, “I often hear now-a-days, the automobile instigated good roads; that the automobile is the parent of good roads. Well, the truth is, the bicycle is the father of the good roads movement in this country.”

Nevertheless, automobilists enthusiastically joined the movement for better roads.

The Good Roads Movement spurred the federal government into building the interstate highways that crisscross our great country. The first was the Lincoln Highway, stretching 3,389 miles from the East Coast to the West Coast. The highway was formally dedicated on October 31, 1913.

Inspired by the success of the Lincoln Highway, Good Roads boosters soon took on another goal – a north-south highway through the heart of the Midwest. The idea for the north-south transcontinental highway was conceived at a meeting in New Orleans in 1915 and the highway was dedicated in 1919.  The Jefferson Highway, as it was named,  passed through the towns of Staples, Wadena, Sebeka, Menahga and Park Rapids, with its northern end in Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada and its southern beginning in New Orleans, LA. The Jefferson Highway passed through eight states and was nearly 2,300 miles long. The highway became known as the Palm to Pine Route, for the roadway took travelers from the Palm trees of Louisiana to the Pines of Minnesota/Canada.

Two notable motorcades traversed this highway. One in  1919 traveling  from New Orleans north to Winnipeg in the heat of summer; a second excursion in 1926 from Winnipeg to New Orleans took place in the cold of winter.

The July 28, 1916 Menahga Journal records that a sociability excursion over the highway left St. Joe., Missouri on July 20 and arrived in Menahga four minutes ahead of schedule on July 26. The excursion made scheduled stops in every town along the way. The newspaper’s editor estimated 500 people attended the event in Menahga. It was at this time that Menahga received the title of “The Gateway to the Pines.”

Three roadways in Minnesota were competing for the honor of being designated a part of the new national highway. The central route won out, according to the Menahga Journal, because of Itasca State Park. The Journal editor stated that it was the original intention of the Jefferson Highway enthusiasts to have the trail follow the “Father of Waters” from its mouth to its source. The July 28,  1916 Sebeka Review reports that Wadena County officials learned that the central route through Minnesota was chosen over the other two “trails” at the time of the 1916 excursion.

Also at the time of the 1916 excursion, the Sebeka Review reported that only 25 percent of the highway was completed. J.D. Clarkson of Carthage, MO, who was president of the Jefferson Highway Assn., made the excursion in 1916 and told the news media that the highway would be completed in 1921. It was actually finished earlier than that and dedicated in 1919.

Jefferson Highway was supplanted by U.S. Route 71 in 1926. Highway 71’s original route has remained largely unchanged since then. It’s northern terminus is in International Falls, Minnesota at the Canadian border, and its southern terminus is between Port Barre and Krotz Springs, Louisiana at an intersection with U.S. Route 190.

Jefferson Highway, on the other hand, was broken up and has disappeared completely in some areas.
Jefferson Avenue in Sebeka is part of the original highway, as is the section of Hwy. 71 through the city of Menahga.

Jack Bloomquist, former editor of the Review Messenger and a handy history resource, said the highway traveled north of Sebeka on Jefferson Avenue to where Mantyla Cemetery is today. There the highway continued straight alongside the railroad track through the swamp. He said remnants of the roadbed were still visible as recent as a few years back at the swamp north of Cat Creek.

Today, 90 years after the Jefferson Highway was dedicated, interest in the old highway has been rekindled and two men who are Jefferson Highway enthusiasts are retracing the 1926 excursion from Winnipeg to New Orleans.  

The “Pine to Palm ‘09” adventure begins in Winnipeg on November 1, with plans to reach New Orleans sometime before Thanksgiving (November 26). The men will be stopping to visit museums, local historians, and making contact with as many people as possible along the way to help raise awareness of the historic highway and to map out the highway's route. They will be stopping in Menahga on November 5. They will arrive sometime in the afternoon, and will camp overnight in the city’s Memorial Forest Park, south of town on Highway 71.

Mike Conlin, one of the members of the “Pine to Palm ‘09” entourage, hopes to collect more photographs, information and memorabilia on the old highway. He welcomes people to visit them at their RV in the park next Thursday and share information, photos or memories of the highway.

Conlin hopes to generate interest in forming a new Jefferson Highway Asso­ciation. The journey will also give him the knowledge needed to promote another, much larger motorcade in the near future. The goal is to restore the Jefferson Highway as a destination tourist attraction. 

More information on Conlin’s work with Jefferson Highway can be found on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jefferson-Highway/129069972974?ref=ts. Conlin is using facebook as a medium to connect people across the country who share a personal interest in the historic highway. There is also a Web site with information at www.Jefferson highway.com. 

If you have information on the old Jefferson Highway, Conlin and his fellow traveler would like to meet you! Mark November 5, Menahga City Park, on your calendar!

And the next time you see a bicyclist pedaling down the highway, remember it was bikers who spearheaded the movement a hundred years ago that brought good roads to our country.