Don’t Blink Or You’ll Miss It: Minnesota’s 5 Shortest State Highways

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.

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.

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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.

Minnesota's 5 Shortest State Highways

For the purpose of this, I decided to exclude the sizable list of short state highways that serve state institutions like correctional facilities and hospitals. These are just connections to those facilities, so they have a very specific purpose besides just being a stretch of road.

Minnesota State Highway 317

This piece of road connects MN 220 to the North Dakota border, running 1.444 miles to the Red River before becoming North Dakota Highway 17.

Minnesota State Highway 308

This stretch of road basically equates to being a shortcut when you look at it on a map. MN 308, connecting MN 11 and MN 89 west of Roseau is essentially a quicker way to get onto MN 89 if you're coming from the west, rather than just driving roughly a mile further to the intersection of MN 11 and MN 89. MN 308 is 1.277 miles long.

Minnesota State Highway 243

MN 242 and MN Trunk Highway 243 combine to connect MN 95 in Franconia Township with a bridge over the St. Croix River that goes to Osceola, Wisconsin. These two pieces of road combined run a stretch of 1.53 miles.

Minnesota State Highway 39

Just over a mile long (1.080 miles), this serves as a connection between MN 23 in Gary New Duluth and the Oliver Bridge at the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. The road then turns into Wisconsin Highway 105, connecting Oliver, Wisconsin and Superior, Wisconsin.

Minnesota State Highway 121

This tiny stretch of road is less than a mile long (0.937 miles), serving as a connection between I-35W and MN 62 in the Richfield/South Minneapolis area.