Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 134

130

Popular Culture Review

designating the portion of U.S. 2 between St. Johnsbury and the New Hampshire
state line as the TRIH. Others, however, correctly describe the Roosevelt Highway
from the New Hampshire state line to St. Johnsbury as being along Vermont State
Highway 18.
In New York, State Highway 18 proceeding west of Rochester, begins to
be marked ‘"Roosevelt Highway” at the western line of the Town of Parma, west of
the Village of Hilton. Local maps designate the route as the Roosevelt Highway
and for miles intersections display modem street signs indicating that roads are
crossing the Roosevelt Highway. The Highway proceeds through Roosevelt Beach
and on to Niagara Falls, where, near Highways 104, 61, and 31, there is a short
‘"Roosevelt Street,” which appears to have been part of the old highway.
Ironwood, Michigan has a small shopping area named “Roosevelt Plaza,”
on Roosevelt Street just north of U.S. 2. Originally, there was a Roosevelt School
standing by the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway. The school is no more,
but the shopping center and the street take their names from the school which was
named for Theodore Roosevelt because of its location on the TRIH.
The idea for the TRIH emerged from a group of Duluth civic leaders,
who met first in Febmary, 1919. Duluth became the site of the headquarters of the
resulting Theodore Roosevelt Highway Association. Oddly, despite this, I could
locate no remnant of the Highway in Duluth. In fact, nowhere in Minnesota was I
able to find any physical indication that the Highway had ever existed.
North Dakota, by contrast, is TR country and I found several remnants.
In Devil’s Lake, on the north side of the TR route, is “Roosevelt Park.” Next to it
is "‘Rough Rider Mini Golf.” Although the village of Denbigh had won an honorary
cup in 1920 for the greatest improvement of a section of the TRIH, I could find no
evidence that the cup still exists. In fact, there is hardly anything left of Denbigh
itself In Des Lacs, however, which is not on the current U.S. 2 but which was on
the original TRIH, the route of the old Roosevelt Highway remains “Roosevelt
Street,” and street signs display the name.
In Minot, the Highway goes by the Roosevelt Park and Zoo. Initially, it
was Riverside Park, but on September 11, 1924, the city erected within it an
impressive equestrian statue of TR. At that time, the Park Board formally
implemented a resolution that it had adopted in 1919 when the old “Wonderland
Trail” became the “Theodore Roosevelt International Highway.” Because of the
TRIH, the Board re-named this park in honor of the late President.
Dr. Henry Waldo Coe of Portland, Oregon donated the statue. Coe had
formerly been a resident of Mandan, N.D. The sculptor was Alexander Phimister
Proctor (1862-1950) of New York, who cast it in the foundry of the Henry Bonnard
Bronze Works in Mt. Vernon, NY. The sculpture and another in Portland, Oregon
are casts fi*om the plaster original in Bismarck. The Museum of the North Dakota