For nearly 100 years, U.S. 41 has been an essential route for north-south travel, but did you know its boundaries expand far outside the Tri-State?
Today’s 2,000-mile highway stretches from Copper Harbor on Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula southeast to Brickell, a high-rise neighborhood in Miami, Florida. It partly follows a trail between the Great Lakes and the Gulf that buffalo and Native American tribes once traversed. During the stagecoach era, a section from Henderson, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, was called Buttermilk Road after the jugs that farmers left for travelers to quench their thirst.
In 1915, Evansville Mayor Benjamin Bosse launched a campaign to build the Dixie Bee Line, which would link the road with the Florida Short Route (now U.S. Route 280) near Nashville. The Dixie Bee Line became part of U.S. Route 41 and the new U.S. Numbered Highway System on Nov. 11, 1926. An average of 40,000 vehicles cross the Bi-State Vietnam Gold Star Twin Bridges every day.
Before a bridge connected Evansville and Henderson, travelers relied on ferries cruising between Dade Park (now Ellis Park) racetrack and Downtown Henderson. The first cantilever bridge, named after 19th century naturalist John James Audubon, opened in 1932, and a second carried southbound traffic starting in 1965. Construction on a new bridge for Interstate 69 travelers is slated to begin in 2027.
