Historic Photo: A Different Highway 69 at New Glarus Woods
A 1936 DNR archive photo captures New Glarus Woods just two years after it became a state park, showing an earlier Highway 69 alignment, a simple roadside sign and a landscape that remains surprisingly recognizable nearly 90 years later.
At first glance, nearly everything in this 1936 photograph of New Glarus Woods State Park seems to belong to another time: the narrow road, the simple roadside sign, the automobile approaching through the trees and a highway without a centerline, shoulders or guardrails.
Look a little longer, however, and the landscape begins to look familiar.
The photograph, credited to Eugene Sanborn in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources archives, was taken only about two years after New Glarus Woods was established as a state park in 1934. The DNR’s history of the property confirms the 1934 establishment date, while a Wisconsin state park historical timeline identifies the photograph itself as “New Glarus Woods State Park, 1936.”
What makes the image particularly interesting today is the road. Although it resembles the Highway 69 corridor that still passes the eastern edge of New Glarus Woods, motorists no longer drive exactly where the automobile in Sanborn’s photograph was traveling.
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