How far along was the interstate…52 years ago?

In the summer of 1965, Wisconsin lawmakers were working on ways to fund highway projects through bonds, instead of having to impose user fees.  Interstate 90 was still a few years away from being finished in the Coulee Region.  Crews were scheduled to build I-90 from the river to Highway 16 during fiscal ’66 and ’67…and finish the 35 miles from 16 to Tomah sometime in 1968.  I-94 was the priority project in the area, with the road from Eau Claire to Black River Falls to be completed during 1966.  
 
Two Safety Patrol members from Prairie du Chien were honored with life-saving awards in Washington, D.C. that year.  Stuart Meyer and John Ahrens were recognized for saving a 6-year-old boy from being hit by a train a block away from school in 1963.  
 
The nation’s governors had their annual conference in Minneapolis in 1965, and a newspaper photo from the event showed two U.S. vice presidents…the incumbent Democrat, Hubert Humphrey, and future Republican V-P Nelson Rockefeller.  Humphrey was hosting the governors at his home in Minnesota.  Rockefeller was still governor of New York, but would be appointed vice president in the 1970’s by Gerald Ford, after Ford succeeded Richard Nixon in the Oval Office because of Watergate.  History in the making, Yesterday in La Crosse.