Historic US-27

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US-27 is the latest mainline U.S. Highway to be decommissioned within
Michigan, the sixth of six. However, unlike many of the other decommissioned
U.S. Highways, US-27 had not been superceded
by an Interstate (or other route designation) over much or all of its length.
Indeed, it was US-27's own "child route," US-127, which replaced much of
it upon decommissioning!

Historical Overview

US-27 is a route that, can be said, developed later in its life and became
more important as time went on. Similar to its westerly and easterly U.S.
route neighbors, US-131 and US-23, US-27 was originally designated as a
somewhat minor route (relative to other U.S. Highways) up the middle of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, with
the only major city it traversed being the state capital of Lansing. As
an illustration, the Michigan State Highway Department paved M-78, the
route connecting Lansing with Battle Creek, much earlier than it did US-27
south of Charlotte through Marshall and Coldwater.

While other U.S. highways across Michigan received much more attention
early on, like US-12 (the Detroit-Chicago route), US-112 (the "other" Detroit-Chicago
route via the Great Sauk Trail), US-10 (the Detroit-Flint-Saginaw route),
US-25 (the Toledo-Detroit-Port Huron route) and US-16 (the Detroit-Lansing-Grand
Rapids route) and were correspondingly upgraded, US-27 developed
over the decades into a major north-south route through the state. So much
so that the Michigan State Highway Dept petitioned the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) in the late 1950s to remove the proposed
Kalamazoo-to-South Bend Interstate and replace it with a northerly extension
of I-69 leading northerly from Fort Wayne. This I-69 extension would roughly
follow the path of US-27 past Coldwater to Marshall. Soon after, an Interstate
extension from Marshall via Charlotte to Lansing was granted and even more
of the US-27 corridor found itself on the Interstate system.

From Lansing northerly, US-27 had been improved in the late-1940s and
early-50s first to St Johns then on to Ithaca as a divided highway. While
this was a great improvement, by the time the upgrades got to Ithaca,
the highway department decided to push the improvements one step further and upgrade
the route to full freeway standards. Thus, from Ithaca northerly past Alma and St
Louis, Mount Pleasant, Clare, Houghton Lake and Higgins Lake, US-27 was
built to the new Interstate standards, although a few crossroads remained
for a few years until they were removed in the early 1960s.

One of the greatest "achievements" for US-27 was being the first route designation to cross the Mackinac Bridge when it opened in November 1957. While US-31 had crossed the Straits of Mackinac via the state auto ferries from 1927 to 1936 or 1939, when the bridge opened to traffic, state highway officials chose to route US-27 over the bridge from Mackinaw City to a new northern terminus at US-2 west of St Ignace. Both US-23 and US-31 terminated at the southern end of the bridge, while US-27 continued northerly over the span on its own. News reports at the time also noted that when the freeway then under construction between St Ignace and Sault Ste Marie was completed, the US-27 designation was to continue north from the Straits, replacing the US-2 designation in that corridor, to the Soo where it would then terminate. The plans to extend US-27 to Sault Ste Marie were apparently dropped by mid-1958, however, as internal State Highway Dept plans showed that US-2 was to be applied to the new freeway along that route alongside the new I-75 designation. Additionally, US-27's time running over one of the state's most recognizable landmarks was, itself, to be rather short-lived. When additional segments of the so called "Ohio-to-Soo" freeway were completed leading northerly and southerly away from the bridge, the I-75 designation was applied to those segments and to the Mackinac Bridge itself. US-27 then ended, once again, along with US-23 and US-31 at the south end of the bridge. But even that was to be short-lived as well.

With the coming of the Interstates, the northern portion of US-27
was unceremoniously "lopped off" in 1961. The new I-75 freeway
replaced the former two-lane routing of US-27 from Grayling through Gaylord
and Indian River and on up to the Straits of Mackinac. Most of the former
route from Grayling to Indian River was turned back to local control, while
the former US-27 between Indian River and Cheboygan was redesignated as
M-27. However, even with the "decommissioning" of US-27 north
of Grayling, it is clear the entire corridor was becoming a major traffic
conduit.

US-27 remained in its shortened state for approximately forty years while additional
upgrades to its route were made. The final segment of freeway between Charlotte
and Lansing was completed in 1992 and the long-awaited "St Johns Bypass" freeway
opened in segments in 1995, 1996 and 1998, extending the freeway from the
Indiana state line to north of St Johns, leaving only about 16 miles of
non-freeway between there and Ithaca.

But the US-27 designation was not destined to remain long enough to see
these last 16 miles converted to full freeway standards. While the much
appreciated M-57 interchange upgrades were being completed in 2000—thus
removing the last traffic signal on US-27 in Michigan—the Michigan Department
of Transportation was in the second year of a three-year long process to
completely remove the US-27 designation from the state.

An attempt to completely decommission US-27 in Michigan was made by the Michigan Dept of State Highways & Transportation on June 25, 1974 when it, along with the Indiana State Highway Commission, applied to the AASHTO U.S. Route Numbering Subcommittee to have US-27 truncated at I-69 on the north side of Fort Wayne, Indiana. That petition was denied, assumedly because no mention had been made by Michigan as to what was to become of the existing route of US-27 from DeWitt northerly to I-75 near Grayling. It took 17 years before a second petition was made to the AASHTO subcommittee on October 11, 1991 to decommission US-27 between Fort Wayne and Lansing, although that petition was also denied as no replacement designation for the route north of Lansing was indicated and AASHTO was unwilling to allow for a discontinuous US-27 to exist (Miami–Fort Wayne and Lansing–Grayling). Eight years later, MDOT tried for a third time, this time first requesting the US-127 designation replace US-27 from Lansing northerly to Grayling immediately followed
by a second request to truncate US-27 from Lansing back to the Indiana
state line. (InDOT cooperated and similarly requested a removal of the
US-27 designation from I-69 from the Michigan state line southerly to Fort
Wayne.) These requests were granted on April 16, 1999. It would take three more years, however,
for the changes to actually take place in the field.

During June and July of 2001, MDOT removed the majority of the US-27 route
markers from the route of I-69 from the Indiana state line northerly to
the I-69, US-27 & US-127 junction near De Witt, north of Lansing.
InDOT did likewise on their portion of decommissioned US-27 between Fort
Wayne and the state line. For the moment, US-27 was effectively a two-part
discontinuous route running from Miami, Florida to Fort Wayne, Indiana
and from Lansing to Grayling. The following year in May 2002, MDOT crews
began the complicated process of swapping out every US-27 route marker
between Lansing and Grayling and replacing them with US-127 signs. It is
estimated well over 500 individual signs needed to be replaced in this
process.

Oddly enough, this process occurred at different times depending on the
MDOT region conducting the work. In the Bay and North regions (Gratiot,
Isabella, Clare, Roscommon and Crawford Counties ), the US-27/US-127 swap-out only took a couple weeks in May and was done as quickly as possible. On
the other hand, the University Region (Clinton Co) took much longer—nearly
the entire summer—to complete the changeover. Thus, for people attempting
to follow the route of US-127 indicated on new road maps, the highway "magically" changed
route designations near De Witt to "US-27" and remained as such
until south of M-57 where it "magically" became US-127 again!

While few vocal complaints were heard, the need for
such a drastic route numbering change and the benefits, if any, derived
from the changes, has been questioned. A variety of other concepts have been offered, including:

• Simply "hiding" the US-27 designation along I-69 between
  Fort Wayne and Lansing. Several states do this, either using the "Minnesota
  method" whereby a few freeway signs are erected in the appropriate
  locations instructing motorists "US-27 follow I-69"; or simply ignoring the designation within the I-69 concurrency, such as Utah does.


• Rerouting US-27 off the I-69 corridor between Tekonsha and Lansing
  by relocating US-27 onto the route of M-60 between Tekonsha and Jackson,
  then utilizing the route of US-127 from Jackson to Lansing.


• Rerouting US-27 off the I-69 corridor between Fort Wayne, Indiana and
  Lansing by relocating US-27 onto the route of US-24 between Fort Wayne
  and Cecil, Ohio, then utilizing the route of US-127 from Cecil to Lansing.


• Coordinating between the states of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio to completely "swap" the
  designations of US-27 and US-127 north of Cincinnati.

 
Continues on Page 2: Year-by-Year History & Additional Information