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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Highway 15 Opening


September 22, 1922 Milwaukee Sentinel


 
The Milwaukee Sentinel had a big promotional section within its paper that day to celebrate the opening of Highway 15, which stretched from the Wisconsin-Illinois border all the way to Marinette.  it was the precursor to major highways like US 41.  As such, each community along the way had its own civic minded ads and news stories were included to tell a bit about the communities featured.  This is Menasha's above. 

The original iteration of State Highway 15 in Wisconsin, essentially ran along the present-day US-41 corridor from Milwaukee via Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Appleton and Green Bay to the Michigan state line (and a connection with Michigan 15) at Marinette/Menominee. Of course, where US 41 was later been upgraded onto new alignment, the original State Highway 15 would have followed the older alignment of US 41, such as along State Highway 175 between Milwaukee and Oshkosh, for example. By the early 1920s, though, State Highway 15 was extended southerly from downtown Milwaukee concurrently with State Highway 17.   

In 1926 with the debut of the U.S. Highway system, all of State Highway 15 north of Milwaukee was supplanted by the new US 41 designation all the way into Michigan's Upper Peninsula. However, since the portion of State Highway 17 between Milwaukee and Manitowoc was assumed into the new US 141 routing (leaving State Highway 17 intact from Manitowoc to Sister Bay), State Highway 15 continued to occupy the Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha-Illinois line route until 1931 when it was replaced by State Highway 42 (now part of State Highway 32). In 1933, all of State Highway 14, which ran from Beloit via Delavan, Elkhorn and Mukwonago to downtown Milwaukee, was redesignated as State Highway 15 to accommodate the brand new US 14 designation in the state. The Beloit-Milwaukee route remained State Highway 15 from 1933 until November 1987 when I-43 was extended from Milwaukee to Beloit, completely replacing the second iteration of State Highway 15. It would be another ten years before the third and current iteration of State Highway 15 would debut.

The current State Highway 15 exists entirely within Outagamie County and runs east–west between Appleton and New London.
thanks to wisconsinhighways.org


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