October 21, 2007: East end of US 56 in Kansas City. US 56 is poorly signed for its short segment in Missouri and is signed onto busy streets instead of a parkway. (The signage could be inaccurate.)
US 56 goes diagonally across Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle, and literally clips the northwest corner of Texas, before ending in New Mexico.
If this holds up (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t), 2012 will be the first time Iowa State does not play either Missouri or Nebraska for the first time since 1904*. It will be the first time Missouri does not play Kansas for the first time in 121 years. (Kansas has been a state for 150 years, Missouri 191.)
Note that Georgia goes to Columbia…and Columbia.
The Big 12 better get every last cent owed in exit fees.
EDIT: *Excluding the 3-game 1918 season. The particulars:
Missouri but not Nebraska (3): 1917, 1920, 2011
Nebraska but not Missouri (8): 1897-1901, 1905-1907
Neither (8): 1892-1895, 1902-1904, 1918
June 13, 2008: On the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago, with the Sears Tower at left, during the 2008 roadgeek meet. I have been on the entire route of I-55 from Chicago to Memphis, although I wasn’t on the mainline between the northbound and southbound exits from I-55 to the Dan Ryan.
October 7, 2008: End of freeway segment in Butler County, Kansas, east of Wichita. My best guess for the empty space beside the US 400 shield is the previous state route number.
US 400 is a Frankenstein’s monster of a route, It was created in a government laboratory in the 1990s with its siblings US 412 and US 425, against all conventions of both US route numbering and basic logic. No other three-digit route ends in double zero, as it would be implied to be a child of US 00, which doesn’t exist. This photo is at the east end of a loooong duplex with US 54; US 400 spends a lot of time piggybacking on other roads for no particular reason except a vague idea that maybe sometime in the next century there might be a four-lane road along that route.
As to #54, which is what this post is about, it is a diagonal US route that used to run from El Paso to Chicago but now comes to a meager end at I-72 less than 50 miles into Illinois. There’s no reason that US 54 couldn’t have been added on I-72 to resume the route still signed as IL 54.
Look at how many small schools have one or two boys’ or girls’ basketball championships. The Melrose boys’ basketball 1937 title is the only one in Monroe County! The year after that, Diagonal won, and it shares the Ringgold County spotlight with a Mount Ayr girls’ track title in 1988.
Perhaps the least off is Decatur County, which has one co-championship in boys’ track over half a century ago. I think “boys’ state mile” is the most obscure, from 1935-73, and in many cases is one of very few championships won in a county. Iowa went metric in track in 1978.
In Tama County, North Tama girls’ track accounts for seven of the county’s 17 titles. Clutier’s 1942 girls’ basketball championship (pictured top, in the Iowa Hall of Pride) was the first in the county. And then, of course, North Tama’s 2010 football title is the most recent.
How did I not know about this?!?
If you’ll excuse me, I have a rabbit hole to fall into.
September 7, 2006: South end of US 53 in La Crosse. Preliminary plans had US 53 coming into Iowa, along what is now US 52 from the Minnesota border to Dubuque. But by the time the system was established, that route was US 55.
This is the first repeated date in my photo series.
May 11, 2007: Near my northwesternmost point on US 52, northwest of Minot. It’s 83 miles to the Canada border from here on 52. I kept going northwest just enough to get Renville County, about 67 miles away from the border (41 more directly on ND 28). That makes Saskatchewan the closest province I’ve been near without actually going.
I’ve also been at the southeast end of US 52, in Charleston SC, but it’s not marked very well.
In all, I have traveled more than half of the entire route of US 52. Most of that comes from Jamestown ND to I-39 in Illinois and the segment through Ohio. But I’ve been on it in every state it goes through.
June 13, 2011: One of the many I-39/US 51 sign sets in Illinois. Personally, I think US 51 should be returned to the old alignment on IL 251, now that the interstate is complete.
