News - Recent Developments along the Jeff Hwy

November 18, 2009
The first beginning to end (Winnipeg to New Orleans) trip of the original route of the Jefferson Highway since 1957 was completed on this day. The journey by Mike Conlin and Gary Augustine began in Winnipeg on November 5th at the Winnipeg marker and ended 13 days later at the obelisk in New Orleans. The trip can be considered a huge success in bringing attention to the Palm to Pine route with as many as 20 newspapers running stories about the trip and the history of the Jefferson Highway. Most of them contained pictures of us and many were on the front page of that paper and to say that we raised "awareness" of the Highway would be an understatement. The hits on our website during the trip were up over 25 times our normal rate and many people signed up as fans of the Jeff on our facebook page.

The pictures and daily blogs that we posted during the trip are still on display on that facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jefferson-Highway/129069972974?ref=ts and you too can become a fan, see our pictures and even contribute your own photos as many other people have done. Since the trip a number of people have come forward offering to organize different events to celebrate the Highway and we will keep you posted as these develop. 

I am looking forward to 2010 and for some reason I still have the urge to drive the entire Jefferson Highway again this year to see all of the Highway and not have a schedule. There is so much to see and I want to see all of it!

October 27, 2009
Our friend from western Canada has left Prince George, BC in several inches of snow heading for Winnipeg and Mile 0 of the Jefferson Highway. I will meet him there on Sunday, November 1 and after we spend a couple of days there we are going to head south on the Pine to Palm route, destination New Orleans. You can follow us on our Facebook page or contact us to receive the daily updates on the progress of the trip. We are aiming to take 2 weeks at an average of 150 miles a day (we have a lot of people to see). 

August 18, 2009
The Jefferson Highway line has reached it's final destination on Google Maps. The line that was started over a year ago, showing the original route of the Pine to Palm Highway was today finished to the corner of Common Street and St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. There is now a line from the stone marker in Winnipeg through Manitoba, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and all the way to the granite obelisk in New Orleans, Louisiana. The first draft is done! 

In Google Maps you will now be able to see the JH line on roads that still exist today (at least on the maps), view abandoned sections of the road and even study the suggested detours around lost pieces of the Pine to Palm Highway. Zoom in as far as you want then pan around in Google Maps. You can even turn on the satellite image and see the terrain with the JH line shown on it.

There is now a trip being planned by this website from one end of the Highway to the other in November 2009. This trip will help us confirm which roads still exist, which ones do not and determine those that may be suitable for travel. This site will keep you up to date on that trip. 

If you want to make sure that you are on the list of people who will follow our travels cut and paste this email address into your email program; polaramaps@hotmail.com. or go to your "contact us" page and send us a message.

May 7, 2009
I know that we all heard about one end of the Pine to Palm Highway flooding after Hurricane Katrina but I wonder how many of us have heard about the same kind of devastating flooding that is currently happening at the other end of the Jefferson Highway. The PowerPoint presentation that you can see below is destruction that is happening now and all of the places in this presentation are on the Pine to Palm Highway.  In some of the pictures it looks like the farmer built levees work better than the New Orleans ones did.     click here for Red River flooding slide show click each slide to go to next one.

November 12, 2008
An informal meeting of some Jefferson Highway Historians was held at the Powers Museum in Carthage, MO. In attendance were Michele Hansford of the Powers Museum, Carol Bohl of the Cass County Historical Society in Harrisonville, MO., Randy Roberts of Pitt State University in Pittsburg, Kansas and Mike Conlin of this website.

Ideas were exchanged about the Jefferson Highway including much of the history especially of the Missouri and Kansas area.  We discussed many of the ideas and effort that has already been put into the modern revival of the JH and the people who are still doing things today. There are quite a few people in various locations who are fanning the JH flame. 

A fairly extensive collection of early documentation and Jefferson Highway newspapers called the "Jefferson Highway Declaration" were viewed and exchanged for the benefit of all. Many maps from the early days of the JH were brought to the meeting and will be a huge boost to the quest to produce a comprehensive map of the entire highway as it exists on today's roads.

A lot of work in locating the original highway has already been done by the people in attendance and others especially in the Missouri and Minnesota areas. A copy of a brochure that is owned by Mr. Lyell Henry (see History of the Jefferson Highway) was in the mix and it will be very useful in re-creating a drivable Jefferson Highway.

Carol Bohl showed us pictures and accounts of a couple of sociability runs that she organized in 2003 and 2005. Their group drove on the original roads near Harrisonville. In some of the places that they went the Jefferson Highway is nothing more than a grassy field illustrating just how important it is to get the highway re-marked before we can't even find some of it.

Randy oversees a collection at Pitt State that includes many early mining maps that are going to be helpful in locating the highway in Kansas and Missouri and he has made them available to our research. He has been a biker (maybe again) and he loves the idea of doing the JH or local parts of it on motorcycles and I'll bet he and I are not alone. Motorcycles as part of sociability runs or having their own JH rides is a good idea.

Michele showed me a spectacular 1920's picture of a piece of the highway that was on my way home. So I got off the freeway to drive a piece of the original JH and took some pictures of some very scenic spots right there in the Ozarks. Fantastic to see! Although it is not easy to do scenery with a cell phone (I forgot my real camera) surprisingly the pictures turned out to be OK and it certainly gives me a reason to go back and do it right. You can see them in photos.

So for now I am looking through my new treasure trove of old maps and translating them in to today's roads and byways (and fields). I also have quite a few new pictures that will be posted very shortly thanks to Carol and her sociability runs. There are some more pictures coming from a small country town in Louisiana called Campti which was on the JH. The person who is sending them recently found this website through Google and contacted me with early info about the highway in that state. It's working!

Mike Conlin
www.jeffersonhighway.com