The state highways in Montana are the
state highways
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 ''numbered'' or ''maintained'' by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a ...
owned and maintained by the
Montana Department of Transportation
The Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) is a governmental agency in the U.S. state of Montana, responsible for numerous programs related to the construction, maintenance, and monitoring of Montana's transportation infrastructure and operati ...
(MDT) in the US state of
Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
.
Montana's state highways are classified as either primary or secondary.
Several of Montana's state highways (both primary and secondary), or sections thereof, have also been designated as part of the
National Highway System.
__TOC__
Primary state highways
The square markers used today to identify primary Montana highways are only slightly different from their 1940s and earlier predecessors. The old markers used the word "ROUTE" above the number in big size, the route number in the middle, and the word "MONTANA" from edge-to-edge at the sign bottom.
The font used was similar to that used for
US routes.
Special routes
Secondary state highways
![Montana Secondary Highway 486 in Columbia Falls, MT](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Montana_Secondary_Highway_486_in_Columbia_Falls%2C_MT.jpg)
Montana's secondary system was established in 1942, but secondary highways (S routes) were not signed until the 1960s.
S route designations first appeared on the state highway map in 1960
and are abbreviated as "S-nnn". Route numbers 201 and higher are, with very few exceptions, exclusively reserved for S routes. Notable exceptions include,
MT 287, and the former MT 789.
The highway markers for Montana's Secondary Highways are distinctive in that the route number appears in black on a white down-pointing
arrowhead
An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as sign ...
.
(Early markers were white numbers on black arrowheads with the word Montana in the flat top of the inverted arrowhead and Secondary appearing below the route number on the shields.)
See also
*
References
External links
{{commons category, State highways in Montana
State
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...