County Trunk Highways (Wisconsin)
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County trunk highways (also called County Highway, CTH; for national mapping software/app consistency, CR, or County Road are also used) are highways maintained at the county level or below in the U.S. state of
Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...
. Every county maintains its own county trunk highway system.


Description

Wisconsin uses letters as designations for its county roads. Highways may be labeled with a single letter (CTH-H), double letter (CTH-LL or CTH-AB) or triple letter (CTH-BBB). Roads are usually named sequentially, although the letter designation may stand for the initials of a road, a geographical feature, a political division (such as CTH-KR along the
Kenosha Kenosha () is a city in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. It is the fourth-most populous city in Wisconsin, with a population of 99,986 at the 2020 census. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Ke ...
Racine county line), or in honor of a person. Two county highways running concurrently on the same roadway often take on both letters on that portion; for instance two highways designated CTH-J and CTH-L would take the designation CTH-JL on a certain route before their divergence down the road, returning to their individual route designations thereafter. Designations may be repeated within a single county, depending on the size and population of the county. Designations may continue over a county line. Usually the letter designation remains the same when the route is a former
state highway A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either Route number, numbered or maintained by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered ...
that has been decommissioned and turned over to
county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...
control. There are no east–west or north–south pattern restrictions on which letters can be used for a road, and they can be
looped ''Looped'' is a play by Matthew Lombardo about an event surrounding actress Tallulah Bankhead. It had a Broadway run in 2010, after two previous productions in 2008 and 2009, all three of them featuring Valerie Harper. Plot Based on a real eve ...
around counties and metropolitan areas. County highways can also run concurrently with state and
U.S. Highways The United States Numbered Highway System (often called U.S. Routes or U.S. Highways) is an integrated network of roads and highways numbered within a nationwide grid in the contiguous United States. As the designation and numbering of these h ...
(the most prominent for the latter being a portion of CTH-M in
Dane County Dane County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 561,504, making it the second-most populous county in Wisconsin after Milwaukee County, Wiscon ...
Highway M that overlaps the Madison Beltline); there are no current concurrencies with county highways and
Interstates The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, or the Eisenhower Interstate System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National H ...
. For the most part, all county highway systems in the state are surfaced
asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...
or
concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...
, though a few lightly-traveled historic roads (often designated by the
Wisconsin Department of Transportation The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) is a governmental agency of the U.S. state of Wisconsin responsible for planning, building and maintaining the state's highways. It is also responsible for planning transportation in the sta ...
as Rustic Roads) are
gravel road A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. Gravel roads are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and ...
s.


History

County trunk highways first came into being in 1921. The first county highways were independent of the state's trunk highway system and lacked state legislative approval. By 1924, every county in Wisconsin had set up its own county highway system, with the state authorizing county highways in 1925.


See also

*


References

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