A group of local historians in southern Manitoba have recently taken it upon themselves to see what they can learn about the old Sunshine Highway that ran from Brandon to Sioux City, Iowa, in the early 1920s. They’ve even planned an old car run on the Highway this summer to trace the early Manitoba motorists’ routes.
Coincidentally, Mike Webber, a volunteer printer and tour guide at the Crystal City Printing Museum, has researched the Sunshine Highway for several years.
In Crystal City Courier newspaper files from 1921, Webber discovered information about the Highway’s opening. He has since found the original route maps and the Route handbook, which give information about the towns along the route, as well as their dining, hotel, and “automobile servicing facilities.”
This was before the federal government developed long stretches of roads; instead, organizations would scout good local roads that interconnected to form routes that could take you across the country.
The handbook even provides the name of a Highway representative (or ambassador) in each town who would assist tourists if needed. Local civic groups would check the roads, encourage good maintenance from local road departments, and establish official highway signs marking the route.
Sheet metal signs were 18 inches square with a yellow background. In the center was a black letter “S” that was stylized in a circle for Sunshine Highway that motorists were to follow. Signs along the road marked right and left turns with an R about the circled S for right turns and an L above the circled S for left turns.
The Sunshine Highway starts right in Brandon and goes south through the Brandon Hills, Wawanesa, Glenboro, Baldur, Glenora, Rock Lake, Crystal City, the U.S./Canada border, Sarles, North Dakota, Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, and South Dakota, before ending 700 miles later at Sioux City, Iowa.
The Sunshine Highway was officially opened at a ceremony in Crystal City on July 23, 1921. Mayor Dinsdale of Brandon, plus the mayor of Woonsocket, South Dakota, Mayor Dalton, who was also the President of the Sunshine Highway, accompanied by 75 officials of the Highway, took part in the ceremony at Crystal City.
The Highway’s original staff had hoped to extend it through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to the Rio Grande, but this never happened.
The Highway was on a stretch where farmers and stockraisers were prosperous. Tourists will find a town every ten miles along the Highway, which is the natural north-south Highway for people wanting to reach the Canadian Northwest or the heart of the Dakotas. It’s the ideal Highway to reach the Black Hills or Yellowstone National Park.
A committee of Alan Melvin, Charlie Baldock, Bill Sandercock and Mike Webber, joined by Gordon Goldsborough of the Manitoba Historical Society plan to re-enact that opening day with a journey of about 110 miles from the U.S. border south of Crystal City to Brandon.
The trip will be called The Sunshine Highway Relic Run, and vehicles built in 1940 and earlier are invited to take part. Like that initial opening-day journey, the committee is hoping for 30 vehicles to make the trek. Many of the roads will be gravel, not paved highways, so this may limit who will be willing to risk dust and stone damage to their old vehicles.
The committee proposed that the old vehicles stop at museums along the route to break up the driving and give the relic riders a chance to explore some history.
The Sunshine Highway Relic Run is set for July 23 with a rain date of July 24. For more information or to sign up, please get in touch with Alan Melvin at 204-529-2104 or akmelvin@gmail.com.
“It’s going to be a very exciting day,” said organizer Alan Melvin. “We’re still looking for some old cars that want to make the drive that day, so please give us a shout if you want to come on the ride along the Sunshine Highway.”
