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Last month our legislature unanimously agreed to name
U.S. 285 from Denver to New Mexico the Ralph Carr
Memorial Highway.
Carr, a Republican who opposed the New Deal, was elected governor in 1938 and easily re-elected in 1940 (in those days, governors served two-year terms). He lost in 1942 when he ran for U.S. Senate.
He lost because he insisted that the U.S. Constitution
applied to all Americans -- including those of Japanese
ancestry. In 1942, the federal government rounded up
American citizens along the West Coast and sent them to
internment camps
in the interior. Alone among
Western governors, Carr opposed this outrage. Most
Coloradans, alas, opposed Carr.
U.S. 285 is appropriate, since it connects Antonito and Denver, and Carr's career took him from Antonito to the state capitol.
We have other named highways. U.S. 285 in the San Luis Valley is also the Korean War Veterans Memorial Highway; it crosses the 38th Parallel, the basis for the dividing line between North and South Korea. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway is Colo. 115 in El Paso County, and that is apt because it flanks Fort Carson.
Interstate 25 from the north border of Pueblo County to the New Mexico line is the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway. This was for his support of the Fryingpan-Arkansas water project, which brought Western Slope water to southeastern Colorado.
Interstate 25 through El Paso County is the Ronald Reagan Highway. Interstate 70 is the Gerald Ford Memorial Highway through Eagle County, the Mother Cabrini Memorial Highway through Jefferson County, and the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Highway in part of the metro area.
Not that anyone actually uses these names, but it appears that Carr is the first Colorado governor to get a highway. Territorial and state governors have their names on counties, like Gilpin and Adams, and on cities like Evans and Thornton. Denver is named after a territorial governor of Kansas.
If the Ralph Carr Memorial Highway starts a trend, what other highways and governors should be involved?
Rob Reuteman of the Rocky Mountain News has proposed that I-25 from downtown Denver to the Douglas County line be named for Gov. Bill Owens, who came up with an innovative financing plan for improvements (including light rail) and pushed it through. This seems fair.
Before Owens, we had three terms of Roy Romer. No
highway comes to mind, but I live by about 175 miles of
railroad track, no longer in service on account of a
corporate merger that Romer supported. The stretch of
rusting rails from Parkdale in Frémont County to
Gypsum in Eagle County could well be named the Roy Romer
Support the Trucking Industry and Burn More Petroleum
Corridor.
It's easy to find a highway for Romer's predecessor,
Dick Lamm. Shortly after taking office in 1975, he said
I am going to drive a silver stake through the heart of
Interstate 470,
since it would lead to more sprawl and
air pollution. It didn't get built as an interstate, but
C-470 follows its proposed route. Lamm was right about its
effects, although he may not want his name on it.
Gov. John Vanderhoof' served only two years, but he did veto the proposed Two Forks Reservoir. Thus a Vanderhoof Road, assembled from the Forest Service and county roads in Jefferson County around Foxton would be apt; if it hadn't been for Vanderhoof, that area would be under water in wet years, and an ugly mud flat much of the time.
As for John Love, governor from 1963 to 1973, the best
suggestion came about 30 years ago from the state
Republican party. Instead of the eastbound Edwin C. Johnson
Tunnel (named for the man who defeated Carr in 1942) at the
top of I-70, call it the Tunnel of Love.
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