This week's edition of Throwback Thursday takes us back to April 2005 to the town of North Canaan, Connecticut. Here, we come across a typical US 7 route shield, but also a sign for the Ethan Allen Highway. If you recall from your history books, Ethan Allen is a key historical figure from the early days of Vermont. US 7, of course, runs across the western parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.
The Asheville Citizen-Times continues to do a great job covering all the angles of the Interstate 40 Haywood County rock slide. An article in Sunday's edition provides a strong historical perspective on how the Pigeon River routing of Interstate 40 came about. And perhaps most strikingly, in an article that ran just prior to the highway's opening in the fall of 1968, how engineers from both Tennessee and North Carolina warned "...that slides would probably be a major problem along the route for many years." On February 12, 1969, not long after the Interstate opened, the first rock slide that would close I-40 occurred. Like many other Interstates within North Carolina, Interstate 40 through the mountains has a history prior to formation of the Interstate Highway System and was also a heated political battle between local communities. The discussion for a road that would eventually become Interstate 40 dates back to the 1940's as the idea for interregional high
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