May 10, 2007: This is the only Manitoba Highway 29 shield ever posted…and now it’s gone.
When the northernmost part of I-29 opened in North Dakota, it took away traffic from one of the busiest port of entry stations in the United States, the one at the northwest corner of Minnesota going to Winnipeg. During the last decade, the US 75 Noyes/Emerson checkpoints were closed and the route has dead-ended at the international border ever since. What most travelers didn’t notice was that right before the port of entry, at the last intersection on the Manitoba side, Manitoba Highway 75 still went east toward Emerson. Its end was signed at Manitoba Highway 200.
Last year that was changed. Now MB 75 goes directly to the checkpoint and I-29. Google Street View went there shortly after the change, and a Canadian roadgeek has take pictures.
Ideally, this will be the change that gets US 75 rerouted from its dead end into Pembina and onto I-29 to meet the same-numbered road going to Winnipeg. It’s the reason the road north of the border is numbered 75, after all. Both Minnesota and North Dakota have to be in on the change, though.
Related: photo gallery from my May 2007 trip through Minnesota to Winnipeg and North Dakota.