The 5 Shortest State Highways In Minnesota Are Unexpected Oddities

Driving around the Land of 10,000 Lakes, you've likely traveled along some of Minnesota's state highways. Most of these roads are lengthy, major routes on the map.

Take MN 210, for example, which connects Duluth to Aitkin, Brainerd, and Fergus Falls before reaching Breckenridge over 200 miles away. Or Minnesota's longest state highway, MN 1, which runs from Illgen City on the North Shore westward almost 350 miles to Oslo, Minnesota, on the border with North Dakota.

Even MN 61, which connects Duluth to the Canadian Border, runs along the North Shore for 150 miles.

You get the idea. Many of these well-known state highways are pretty lengthy. They're not all that long, though. Some of them are actually shockingly short.

READ MORE: This Little-Known App Minnesota First Responders Swear By Is One That You Need

As I was driving through the Gary New Duluth neighborhood recently, I saw a sign for MN 39 that heads from Gary to the Olver Bridge at the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. It's a sign I've seen many times over the years, but it never really dawned on me until just then - that has to be one of the shortest state highways in all of Minnesota.

So I looked into it and found that yes, it is indeed one of the shortest state highways in Minnesota. But I was also surprised to see just how many other state highways are also quite short. Most of them have something in common. One of them seems like a bit of an oddball compared to the others.

Here's a look at some of Minnesota's shortest state highways.