This morning at the laundromat I read an interesting fact about a transcontinental road from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon in Down East Magazine.

As there's not much on wikipedia for the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway, I'll give you the whole Down East article.

Here we go:

Lost Highway

A transcontinental road once connected the two Portlands.

File this one under the Annals of Forgotten History. Back in the Roaring Twenties, you could drive on a single road from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. More than a “mere road,” the four-thousand-mile Theodore Roosevelt International Highway was described in a brochure of the time as “the highway that opens to the tourist the door of the treasure-box of beauties and grandeurs and varied scenery of the North continent as no other national highway does.”

From downtown Portland the byway headed north and west through Littleton, New Hampshire, before crossing Lake Champlain north of Burlington, Vermont, and threading west to the Canadian border at Niagara Falls. (What the Canadians called the road we have no idea.) It entered the United States again at Detroit and continued through Iowa, South Dakota, and Montana before terminating on the Columbia River in Oregon. Punctuated along the way by red markers bearing the white letters “T.R.,” the road was first organized in 1921 to serve as “a suitable memorial to one of America’s greatest builders and statesmen, and at the same time promote tourist travel to a section of the United States that has had few tourists in the past,” according to an article in the Roosevelt Highway Bulletin.

Alas, this monument to the Bull Moose was altered just a half-dozen years later when the federal government began assigning route numbers to the country’s established roads. Roosevelt’s road was soon carved up, becoming part of more prosaically named roads such as Route 2 and, in Maine, Route 302. But around Sebago Lake, for instance, the honor for Roosevelt was a bit longer lasting. “I started going up that way when I was three or four years old because my parents had friends in Bridgton, and I distinctly remember seeing signs that said ‘Roosevelt Trail,’ ” remarks director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission Earle Shettleworth, Jr.

Those signs are long gone, but Max Skidmore, a political science professor at the University of Missouri who recently wrote a book about his experience tracing the old highway, says more subtle remnants remain today. “I only found one intact marker, in Troy, Montana, but in Maine as you progress west you still find buildings that say they are ‘203 Roosevelt Trail.’ I also remember a ‘Roosevelt Flea Market’ on Route 302, so there are actually a number of little things left over from the highway in Maine.”

With most modern highways seeming to be utterly devoid of personality, it’s reassuring to find some touches of the great T.R. still remain in Maine.

As I grew up on Route 302 in Naples I find this pretty interesting. You might remember I mentioned it about fifteen months ago (see 10th Mountain Division).

Of course, the author or this piece, as well as the remarks director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, really haven't done their homework. About five years ago all of the local towns renamed roads and streets for enhanced 911 service. In Naples, right next to Bridgton, Route 302 was officially named "Roosevelt Trail".

So naturally the Maine Historic Preservation Commission's director would remember seeing signs that said ‘Roosevelt Trail'. Anyone who drives through town would see them ...

Anyway, I'm glad to know for certain that the 'trail' was named after TR and not FDR. Sure, I always assumed that FDR was too recent and whatnot, but still, it's good to have real proof.

So there we go.