saturday evening with mr t...

this week mr t dug up some interesting info on our favorite highway,old u.s.27.this info is courtesy of MichiganHighways.org

US-27 is the latest mainline U.S. Highway to be decommissioned within Michigan, the sixth of six. However, unlike many of the other decommissioned U.S. Highways, US-27 had not been superceded by an Interstate (or other route designation) over much or all of its length. Indeed, it was US-27's own "child route," US-127, which replaced much of it upon decommissioning!

Historical Overview

US-27 is a route that, can be said, developed later in its life and became more important as time went on. Similar to its westerly and easterly U.S. route neighbors, US-131 and US-23, US-27 was originally designated as a somewhat minor route up the middle of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, with the only major city it traversed being the state capital of Lansing. As an illustration, the Michigan State Highway Department paved M-78, the route connecting Lansing with Battle Creek, much earlier than it did US-27 south of Charlotte through Marshall and Coldwater.

While other U.S. highways across Michigan received much more attention early on, like US-12 (the Detroit-Chicago route), US-112 (the "other" Detroit-Chicago route via the Great Sauk Trail), US-10 (the Detroit-Flint-Saginaw route), US-25 (the Toledo-Detroit-Port Huron route) and US-16 (the Detroit-Lansing-Grand Rapids route) and correspondingly received more attention, US-27 developed over the decades into a major north-south route through the state. So much so that the MDSH petitioned to AASHO in the late 1950s to remove the proposed Kalamazoo-to-South Bend Interstate and replace it with a northerly extension of I-69 leading northerly from Fort Wayne. This I-69 extension would roughly follow the path of US-27 past Coldwater to Marshall. Soon after, an Interstate extension from Marshall via Charlotte to Lansing was granted and even more of the US-27 corridor found itself on the Interstate system.

From Lansing northerly, US-27 had been improved in the late-1940s and early-50s first to St Johns then on to Ithaca as a divided highway. While this was a great improvement, by the time the upgrades got to Ithaca , the state decided to push the improvements one step further and upgrade the route to full freeway standards. Thus, from Ithaca northerly past Alma & St Louis, Mount Pleasant, Clare, Houghton Lake and Higgins Lake, US-27 was built to the new Interstate standards, although a few crossroads remained for a few years until they were removed in the early 1960s.

for more , go to On Page 1: Historical OverviewOn Page 2: Year-by-Year History Additional Information