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Originally Posted by RTD
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That article is actually full of mistakes.
The history of Highway 4 is complicated. Although originally Highway 4 was what is now known as Highway 16 (beginning west of Portage and heading west), in the late 1950s it was extended east to make a second "trans-Manitoba highway" (in addition to Highway 1), using some wandering parts of the old Highway 1 that had been replaced in the late 1950s with new sections of the more streamlined #1 route required by the federal TCH programme. That Hwy 4 is what we are seeing in the photo.
So the discarded alignment of Highway 1 from Portage to Winnipeg (through Poplar Point, now called Highway 26) was tacked on to the original Highway 4, as was the old route of Highway 1 east from Winnipeg, which was Main Street (now Hwy 9) to Lockport and then what is now Highway 44 to the Ontario boundary. All of this -- the original Highway 4 (now 16), Highway 26, Portage Avenue (shared with Hwy 1), Main Street, Highway 9, and Highway 44 -- became the new enlarged "Highway 4". I guess that this designation didn't really make a lot of sense, so the Highways department decided by the mid-60s to break it back up into separate highways, giving them the numbers 4, 26, 9 and 44 (two 4's, for old time's sake). Then, some years later, with the Yellowhead renumbering, even the remaining "original" Highway 4 through Neepawa and Minnedosa disappeared, becoming 16. In the early 80s, when the little highway across the Red River was built north of Selkirk, "4" was taken off the shelf and applied to it. That highway has nothing to do with the old Highway 4, contrary to what the wikipedia article says.