History
The original southern terminus of US 71 was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the Baton Rouge-Port Allen Mississippi River ferry. This was also the original western terminus of US 190 which continued east from the ferry landing through Baton Rouge, shortly intersecting US 61. US 71 was routed along the Jefferson Highway (pre-1955 State Route 1) from Baton Rouge north to Clarence (near Natchitoches). From Clarence to Shreveport, a more direct route was chosen than that followed by the Jefferson Highway, and US 71 continued north into Arkansas rather than west into Texas.
The current route of US 71 in Louisiana follows or closely parallels the 1926 alignment north of Lebeau. Between Port Allen and Lebeau, US 71 originally followed present-day LA 76 to Rosedale, LA 77 to Ravenswood, and LA 10 to Lebeau, crossing the Atchafalaya River by ferry at Melville. In 1935, US 190 was extended west onto a newly-built section of State Route 7 (the Evangeline Highway) with a bridge across the Atchafalaya River at Krotz Springs. The following year, US 71 was moved onto this route, branching northward to Lebeau from its current southern terminus west of Krotz Springs and bypassing the ferry crossing at Melville. In 1940, US 71 and 190 were moved onto the new Mississippi River Bridge at Baton Rouge, bypassing the ferry crossing there. US 71 was cut back to its current southern terminus west of Krotz Springs in 1951.
In northwest Arkansas, the 1926 alignment of US 71 followed Highway 102 from Bentonville to Centerton, then north on Highway 102 Business to Highway 72 southeast of Hiwasse. From there, it followed Arkansas 72 to Gravette, where it turned north on Highway 59 to the Missouri state line. In the 1930s, US 71 was rerouted along Arkansas 72 between Bentonville and Gravette, then north on Arkansas 59. This alignment lasted until the early 1960s when it was realigned along Highway 100 between Bentonville and the Missouri state line. In Missouri, the new US 71 replaced Route 88, which had been defined in 1922, while the old US 71 became Route 59.
In 2010, the historic highway was remembered in song on the Highway 71 CD by folk band 3 Penny Acre.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Route 71
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)