History
The first roadway along the route of the modern CR 492 was a plank road built by the Cleveland and Sharon Iron Companies in the 1850s. The roadway was originally named the Marquette–Negaunee Road, due to its endpoints. The road was included as a section of "Division 8" in the State Trunkline Highway System when that was created on May 13, 1913. In 1917, the first highway centerline in the nation was painted along a section of the road known as "Dead Man's Curve". The centerline was painted by Kenneth Ingalls Sawyer, long-time superintendent of the county road commission. Traffic along the road was heavy for the era, and in the curves, drivers would follow the innermost side instead of keeping to their own lane. Sawyer added arrows to indicate travel direction and found that motorists followed the appropriate travel lanes.
At this time, the road carried an unsigned designation of "Trunk Line 15" (T.L. 15) as designated by the Michigan State Highway Department (MSHD). This designation was changed to M-15 by the time the state highway system was signed by MSHD in 1919. With the creation of the United States Highway System on November 11, 1926, M-15 in Michigan was redesignated as a part of the larger US 41. Between Negaunee and Marquette, US 41 was routed north of the Marquette–Negaunee Road, following a section of M-35 out of downtown Negaunee. At the time, M-28 was extended eastward through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Between Negaunee and Marquette, M-28 followed the old routing of M-15. By 1936, M-28 was shifted to follow US 41 between Negaunee and Marquette, transferring the old Marquette–Negaunee Road to county control.
After this transfer, it carried the CR 492 designation. In 1964, several abandoned underground mine shafts collapsed underneath M-35 in Negaunee, and M-35 was rerouted out of the city along its current roadway through Negaunee Township, connecting with CR 492. The western end of CR 492 was moved by 2001. Before this realignment, CR 492 followed Brookton Road, parallel to US 41/M-28 before turning to the previous terminus just west of the border between Marquette Township and the City of Marquette. After the change, CR 492 turned north to intersect the highway opposite of Wright Street. The CR 492 designation was extended along Wright Street at the same time. In 2006, the city of Marquette extended Wright Street to end at Lakeshore Boulevard.
In 2010, the county road commission built an extension to Commerce Drive across US 41/M-28. This extension was designed to connect the southern and northern segments of CR 492 severed by traffic flow changes along US 41/M-28. Previously, traffic wishing to cross between the two segments would need to follow US 41/M-28 to a median turn around in a maneuver similar to a Michigan left. Now traffic can follow Brookton Road to the Commerce Drive extension and around the Westwood Mall to Wright Street on the connector that is designed for 35-mile-per-hour (56 km/h) traffic. The stop light at the US 41/M-28 intersection was installed in early November to complete the project. In August 2010, the speed limits along Wright Street were increased. After the results of a speed study, the limits were increased from 25 and 35 mph (40 and 56 km/h) to 35, 40 and 45 mph (56, 64 and 72 km/h).
Read more about this topic: County Road 492 (Marquette County, Michigan)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)