News: Neillsville (Re-routing HWY 10 - 1968)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Schaeffer

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 11/07/1968

Neillsville (Re-routing HWY 10 - 1968)

The re-routing of Highway 10 to the south of Neillsville, tentatively proposed for sometime after 1973, and other highway projections were sketched to members of the Neillsville Chamber of Commerce at their annual meeting Monday evening in the Lynn Mutual Insurance Company headquarters here.

Marvin Schaeffer, Eau Claire district highway engineer, told the 47 people assembled that tentative plans call for the relocation of highway 10 from the intersection of County Trunk B (near the Wildcat Inn), south of Neillsville and generally following the present course of Highway 73.

Cautioning that the project is only in the planning stage, Schaeffer said that a connecting road would be built to Neillsville, probably connecting in the area of Hewett Street.

Original plans called for the project to be undertaken in 1973, Schaeffer said; but because of the availability of funds and other factors “1975 now is the earliest it could be done, and it may be even further delayed.”

Schaeffer said that a one-mile corridor has been studied south of the city in connection with the planning; that a second one-mile-wide corridor north of Neillsville, and extending straight west from Granton, also had been studied. The latter, he indicated, has been rejected, at least for the time being.

In the overall planning of the state highway department, Schaeffer said that highway 10 will eventually become a primary road from the Minnesota border to Green Bay. Present traffic counts - which, perhaps to the surprise of some local residents, indicates the heaviest traffic area is on Highway 73 and 95 south of the city - indicating that Highway 10 west of Neillsville would be a primary highway; east of the city, a standard grade highway.

Tentative plans for the road system of the area, describing the highway system as to use, type, etc., have been developed to 1990 by the state highway department, Schaeffer said.

In the Clark County area: Highway 29 will become a freeway, built to freeway specifications, to Green Bay; Highway 13 will become an improved highway; and (balance of this article is missing.)