Signs installed by the Arizona Department of Transportation now mark two sections of US 60 between Globe and Apache Junction as Governor Rose Mofford Memorial Highway, carrying a designation recently approved by the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names.

The designation applies between mileposts 250 and 240.5, from Globe through Miami, and mileposts 200 through 214.5, from Apache Junction to just east of Florence Junction (State Route 79). Drivers in each direction of US 60 will see signs where each of the newly named stretches begins.

US 60 between mileposts 214.5 and 240.5 is already named Gila-Pinal Scenic Road.

Mofford, Arizona’s 18th governor and the first woman to serve in that post, was from Globe. In addition to serving as governor from 1988 to 1991, Mofford was Arizona’s secretary of state from 1977 to 1988.

The Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names approved adding Mofford's name to the two US 60 stretches at its Jan. 22 meeting.

Other state highway stretches honoring individuals and groups include the Piestewa Freeway (State Route 51), Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway (Interstate 10), Buffalo Soldier Trail (State Route 90 in southeastern Arizona), Arizona Veterans Highway (Interstate 17), Purple Heart Trail (Interstate 40) and Veterans Memorial Highway (Interstate 15).

For more information on the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names, please visit the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records website at azlibrary.gov (Click About > Boards and  Commissions).

You can see lots of photos of these signs in this Flickr slideshow:

Today we are throwing back to the original tunnel that used to help drivers cross between Superior and Miami.

The 300-foot Claypool Tunnel opened in 1926 as part of the 21-mile "million dollar highway" that was major undertaking for the relatively new Arizona Highway Department. We wrote more about the tunnel and the highway in another blog post recently.

This photo of the tunnel was taken some time during the 1940s, so roughly 20 years (give or take) into the highway's operation. You'll notice a small plaque over the tunnel, though there's not enough resolution to read more than "Claypool Tunnel" on it.

The 1,200-foot Queen Creek Tunnel opened in 1952 and took the route of US 60 with it. But Claypool Tunnel was still active, just in a different way. During the cooler months it's a popular hiking destination in the Superior area. However, danger of falling rocks led to the tunnel itself being closed off earlier this year.

But if you have some time and feel like stretching your legs for a few miles, you can still get close enough to see this early feat of highway engineering for yourself.

Today we are throwing back to Feb. 11, 1983, and a milestone for US 60 (Superstition Freeway), a main link between the East Valley and Phoenix.

As you can clearly see in this photo, that's the day when the 2-mile segment between Gilbert Road and Val Vista Drive in Mesa officially opened. According to the March 1983 edition of Newsbeat, ADOT's employee newsletter at the time, about a hundred people attended the ribbon-cutting for this expansion of the freeway.

The Newsbeat article also tells us that the guy holding up the large "Accelerating Toward Completion..." sign is Larry Hecker, who was the chair of the State Transportation Board. The person holding the camera labeled "eyewitness news" is from KTVK/Channel 3. And the person in the Phoenix International Raceway official race car? Believe it or not, that's former Governor Bruce Babbitt behind the wheel.

Though it was without a doubt an exciting moment, the freeway had to come a long way before then and still had a long way to go after. The first part of the Superstition Freeway, then dubbed "AZ 360," had been completed between Interstate 10 and Mill Avenue in 1971. It would take four expansions and a decade to make it to Gilbert Road.

In 1991 the freeway would finally make it out to Apache Junction, where it hit US 60 coming from Superior. It was also around this time that the "AZ 360" label was discarded and US 60's official alignment moved to the Superstition Freeway instead of the Main Street/Apache Boulevard/Mill Avenue/Van Buren Street route it had traditionally taken through Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix.

But all that was still well in the future when this photo was taken, and for now we'll leave Governor Babbitt to his test drive of the Valley's newest freeway segment.

By Laurie Merrill / ADOT Communications

This is a good old-fashioned whodunit, Arizona Department of Transportation-style.

It’s the mystery of the missing plaque that was soldered and hammered onto a boulder to commemorate the opening of the Miami-Superior Highway.

On April 29, 1922, the Arizona State Highway Department celebrated its most ambitious projects of the time: 21 miles of winding road through mountainous terrain previously only accessible by horse, stage or railroad.

Nicknamed “the million dollar highway” for its cost and built using labor from a prison camp created in Superior for the purpose, the road was replaced in 1952 with US 60.

“Even between Globe and Miami, it was a winding road,” said Stanley Gibson, former Globe mayor and councilmember for 40 years. “It took about an hour to get from Globe and Superior.”  

Four years later, in 1926, blasting and drilling was completed on a 300-foot tunnel named for state senator W.D. Claypool. In 1952, it was replaced by the 1,200-foot Queen Creek Tunnel.

“After they built and widened this tunnel they installed a plaque,” said Richard Powers, former engineer-turned-historian of ADOT’s construction and maintenance district serving the Globe area.

Ah, the missing plaque. It proclaimed that the Miami-Superior Highway, 21 miles long, cost $1 million and was constructed between 1919 and 1922. It named Gov. Thomas Campbell and Engineer Thomas Maddock and listed other dignitaries and construction officials, including Claypool, who represented Gila County.

“In 2014, I decided to stop and take a picture of it,” said Gibson, a lifelong Globe resident who, with his wife Janet, ran Gibson’s clothing store on Broad. “Two months later, it was gone.

“I don’t know if it’s been melted down or if someone has it in their house.”

Powers, district engineer in what was then ADOT's Globe District from 1993 to 2007, said removing the plaque wouldn't have been easy or quick.

“It got stolen, and it was anchored and bolted onto solid rock,” Powers said. “They had to chisel at it for weeks or months to get it out of there.”

Today the old Miami-Superior Highway is a hiking trail. Powers, who has authored books and articles about Arizona highway history and gives talks on the subject, recently led an informative hike along the mine-owned land and discussed wildlife and minerology.

“The old culverts and bridges are there,” Powers said. “It’s a 2- to 3-mile hike to (the Claypool) tunnel.”

What became of the plaque may be never be known, but its historical value may be revived, Powers said. He said the Gila County Historical Museum has determined to commission a replica from a picture of the sign.

By Doug Nintzel / ADOT Communications

It wasn’t the Oscars, and, more importantly, it was about highway safety. As the video above shows, ADOT was in the spotlight at a recent ceremony in Washington D.C., when a national group honored one of the agency’s creative safety solutions.

The National Operations Center of Excellence presented its Best Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Project Award to ADOT’s US 60 Superstition Freeway Improvement Project in Tempe. Representatives of ADOT’s own Transportation Systems Management and Operations division were on hand to accept the honor.

For the Superstition Freeway project, an ADOT team evaluated a section of westbound US 60 between Mill Avenue and the I-10 interchange where a concerning number of crashes, most of them minor, had resulted backups during busy periods.

In collaboration with the city of Tempe and the Arizona Department of Public Safety, ADOT adjusted lane striping and installed new signs along that stretch of westbound US 60 in summer 2018. The result: improved traffic flow in the left lanes, leading to a significant reduction in crashes. The video features an ADOT engineer who worked on this project explaining its effects.

The National Operations Center of Excellence serves as a nationwide resource for the Transportation Systems Management and Operations community. Its partners include the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America and Institute of Transportation Engineers. The Federal Highway Administration also supports the effort.

ADOT’s Interstate 17 Wrong-Way Vehicle Alert System being tested in Phoenix also received a national runner-up award in the competition.

By Garin Groff / ADOT Communications

The Renaissance is known for its advances in science, art and culture, among its many historic accomplishments.

So with an annual festival celebrating the Renaissance drawing heavy traffic along US 60 near Gold Canyon, ADOT has turned to the very modern science of traffic engineering to help reduce delays not only for attendees but for residents and visitors heading to and from areas east of the venue.

These improvements, introduced last year, are returning when the Arizona Renaissance Festival kicks off its 2019 run on Saturday.

The most noticeable improvement helps address eastbound traffic as people head to the festival in the morning. Traffic backups on eastbound US 60 have reached up to 11 miles in recent years. Thanks to some traffic-management changes made in partnership with festival organizers, the queue shrank to less than 3 miles last year.

This benefit results from two changes where US 60 reaches the festival gates, said Tony Abbo, an ADOT traffic engineer who oversaw the effort.

The festival added a small section of asphalt at the west gate so vehicles could turn into the facility more efficiently. Also, a crossover was added in the median at the eastern gate so westbound drivers had a direct turn into the event grounds. Previously, delays were exacerbated by those drivers making U-turns to merge with eastbound traffic.

The improvement won’t just benefit Renaissance Festival attendees. Based on last year's travel time studies, drivers who were just passing through the area toward places like Superior or Globe saw delays drop to about 8 minutes compared with other non-event weekends.

ADOT monitored and fine-tuned throughout last year’s event with help from a drone.

Our engineers will continue monitoring traffic until the event ends March 31 to determine if further improvements can be made this year or in the future.

By David Woodfill / ADOT Communications

For this Throwback Thursday, we offer this undated, grainy image of the old commercial district of Globe, complete with a horse and buggy.

The photo is actually a copy of a postcard found on a negative in ADOT's archives. We can only assume it's from before or in the earliest days of the state highway system.

The trust building is long gone, but the courthouse still stands on Broad Street, part of which is now US 60. Designed by architect W.R. Norton, the Gila County Courthouse opened in 1906 and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.