WINONA, Mnin. — Federal highway planners decided in the 1950s to build Interstate 90 to become a bigger, better and faster transcontinental route. It would replace older routes, including U.S. Highway 14. The plan included I-90 from LaCrosse going up the Dakota Coulee to Nodine and Wilson – and bypass Winona. William F. White, publisher of the Winona Republican-Herald, was worried. Bill White fretted that Winona would lose its prominence as a transcontinental stop-over for U.S. 14 traffic. Might Winona become a backwater town? White would have none of it. His Republican-Herald, influential at the time, launched an editorial campaign for I-90 to follow the existing U.S. 14 route through Winona. However, White was powerless to change the feds’ preferred Dakota Coulee route. Also: The concept for a massive interstate superhighway system had captured public favor nationwide and was immensely popular.
Half built. A grand scheme for Highway 43 to be a superhighway into into Winona has been mothballed 60-plus years. The grading is in place. Bridges and culverts too. But what about the traffic? Never enough to justify the project. Will it ever come to be a grand four-lane gateway to Winona? Doubtful. Image: Steve Lunde
But White had local editorial clout. His Republican-Herald rditorials pushed the state Highway Department to promise to widen the existing Highway 43 up West Burns Valley to I-90 as a first-class commercial route into Winona. It was a compromise but the best White could manage. A four-lane swatch was cut seven miles along the historic State Highway 43 between Winona and Wilson. State highway engineers were displeased at being forced politically to spend millions of dollars on a split-lane superhighway spur that they knew would never be much used. But pressed by White’s editorials and complicit Winona legislators, the state engineers reluctantly drew up plans for the elaborate Highway 43 upgrade. Curves that dated back to horse-drawn wagon days were smoothed out . Erratic ups and downs were evened to meet interstate freeway standards. Graders, bulldozers and dynamite cut the route into bluffs. New bridges and culverts were laid. It was just enough to cool the ardor of Bill White and his buddies in the local maker-and-shaker crowd. The project seemed on course. But then came delays. State Highway Department budget priorities, somehow, just somehow, didn’t have quite enough money to surface the additional lanes. Or to finish grooming and signage. Or to build access to what was supposed to be the downhill lanes. The same the next budget cycle. And the next. The state highway budget just couldn’t be stretched far enough to fish the project. So has been the case for 60-plus years. Chalk one up for the bureaucrats.
Today the double-wide Highway 43 route is grassed over and kept mowed but nothing more. The project still is listed for an upgrade somewhere in dusty St. Paul files. But don’t hold your breath. The route remains testimony to the power to the press, even when misguided by local boosterism. Call it, if you will, the Bill White Memorial Superhighway that probably will never be.
Navigational tip: This article is part of the Winona Journal series Remember When. The articles are archived in the Almanac section, which you can find in the black bar under the nameplate at the top of the site.