This week's Throwback Thursday photo takes us to Concord, the capital of New Hampshire. I had taken this photo of a NH 9 route shield affixed to an US route shield in April 2006, based on a tip from some friends who saw the sign (and it opened up their eyes) the previous year. Certainly, this is an ingenious use for road signs. The last time I was in Concord was back in June and I believe that these signs have since been replaced.
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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