The Pine to Palm Tour on the Jefferson Highway

This is the route of the Jefferson Highway

Imagine driving the above Studebaker in the winter in Minnesota.

WINTER OF 1926

The newspaper states........

Pine to Palm tourists will stop in Thief River Falls coming from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Business men from Winnipeg will make an auto tour to New Orleans, leaving Winnipeg January 23 and making this city their first stop. They will prove that the north end of the Jefferson Highway is not snowbound. Local folks are encouraged to join.

100 business men stop in city on the Pine to Palm tour. There will be an elaborate program.

The Pine to Palm tour is on schedule in spite of the storm. The writer for the Warren Sheaf stated it was the worst blizzard in Manitoba in years. There were only two mishaps on the 174 mile tour to Thief River Falls. The service car broke a wheel at Emerson and the last car in the party continued south on the Pembina trail until it went in to a ditch at Wylie.

Provencher, proprietor of the Evelyn Hotel accompanied the group in this Studebaker sedan. The Provencher sedan turned over in the ditch near Albert Lea, Minnesota. Another four cars were held up for repairs.

There are 30 cars in the cavalcade of Pine to Palm. The last writing was from Joplin, Missouri which is 1339 miles from Winnipeg and 855 miles from their destination. The party traveled 2194 miles over the Jefferson Highway.

The Jefferson Highway was replaced with the new numbered US Highway system in the late 1920s. The tour in the winter of 1926 was not the first tour but the only one mentioned in the Times.

This Highway was organized in November, 1915, at New Orleans, Louisiana. It was organized for the dual purpose of providing a great north and south highway and to honor the name of Thomas Jefferson for the part he took in the Louisiana Purchase.

The first thought was to have the course of the Jefferson Highway entirely in the Louisiana Purchase, but that was sentiment. When the time came to actually lay the course it was found to have slipped over into Texas and gotten east of the Mississippi River for a space, in Minnesota.

The Jefferson Highway, which many readers may realize by now is the predecessor to Highway 71, was numbered Highway 1. Highway 71 does not run through Thief River Falls. The only US highway is 59, which stops in Lancaster, MN at the Canadian border and at Laredo, Texas. Pretty hard to get lost on the way to Galveston, only have to look for one number!

Other roads in Thief River Falls are MN 1 and MN 32. The number one route was given the Highway 1 designation because it was one of the longest trunk highways in Minnesota. It stretches across northern Minnesota east/west from Ely to Oslo. It was constructed in 1933 and stretches 346 miles.

Minnesota Highway 32 is located in west-central and northwest Minnesota. It goes north to Greenbush where it ends. The other end of this 146 mile trunk is near Barnesville, MN.

One may take US Highway 10 out of Fargo and intercept 32 east of Hawley to go to Thief River Falls through towns named Twin Valley, Gary, Fertile, Marcoux, (now just a corner where US Highway 2 crosses), Red Lake Falls, St. Hilaire, and then, Thief River Falls.

What is the difference between a US highway and a Federal highway? Think about the US highway system as before the Interstate Highway system.

The United States Highway System or simply as "US" highways, was the first time in history that a national standard was set for roads and highways.

This system was created by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1925 as a response to the confusion created by the 250 or so named many named highways, such as the Lincoln Highway or the National Old Trails Highway. Instead of using names and colored bands on telephone poles, this new system would use uniform numbers for inter-state highways and a standardized shield that would be universally recognizable. The most important change was that this new system would be administered by the states, not by for-profit private road clubs. Even then, people decried the idea of giving roads numbers since they felt numbers would make highways cold and impersonal. Does it?

Would you rather get directions stating "Take the Paul Bunyan highway" or would you rather receive directions stating, "Take 2 out of Duluth, then go north on 59 at Erskine".

Anyone out there want to fold the maps for me?

e