Essex County Road 34

County Road 34 is the original alignment of Highway 3 in Essex County, Ontario.

The road branches from the original Highway 3 alignment in Maidstone, Ontario (just north of Essex, Ontario, and continues east, paralleling the current Highway 3 (and South Talbot Road) 1 km to the north, and 1 km south of North Talbot Road, for most of the way to Ruthven, Ontario.

The stretch of road from Windsor, Ontario to Manning Road was built with enough right of way to be twinned into a dual carriageway in the 1930s, but this has not happened, yet.

History

Highway 3 originally travelled down CR 34's path all the way through Essex, Cottam, Ruthven, and Leamington until 1971, when the MTO decided to build a bypass around the town of Essex. This Essex By-Pass was built and opened in 1977, and was temporarily re-routed along Malden Road (Formerly an extension of CR 12, not to be confused with Highway 114 OR Essex County Road 3) to CR 34 in North Ridge while it was being extended to Ruthven. This section opened in 1982.

By 1996, the town of Leamington and Township of Gosfield South were proposing a bypass around Leamington to alleviate the traffic in the town. After a debate on where the road should go ("Think Twice, Road Built Once", as the Windsor Star reported on this), the road was built by the MTO from the current terminus of CR 34 to Highway 3 on the east side of Leamington.

Though Highway 3 east of Highway 77 was downloaded to the county as CR 34, the Leamington Bypass was...
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