MANKATO — Jim Swanson doesn’t need a journal or a photo album to remember what he helped accomplish in a 44-year career with the Minnesota Department of Transportation. He can just look at a road map from 1968 and compare it to one from 2012.

Here are a few of the black and red lines the former Maynard farm boy help put on the map.

I-94, I-35E, I-494

Getting from Minneapolis to St. Paul was still an arduous journey over city streets 44 years ago. Swanson was involved, although in a lowly way, in building I-94 between the Twin Cities.

A technician for MnDOT, he inspected the storm sewers along the route. He later worked on I-35E, the new freeway serving St. Paul.

Swanson also worked on the massive interchange between I-35E and I-494 and the nearly mile-long I-494 bridges over the Minnesota River near Eagan.

“I’ve done a lot of interesting projects that aren’t interesting to most folks but are interesting to me,” he said.

Bridges high and near

Swanson oversaw construction of one of the state’s most striking bridges: the Smith Avenue High Bridge in St. Paul. The arched bridge towers 160 feet over the Mississippi River, connecting St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood to downtown.

Later, as the district engineer in Mankato, Swanson led efforts to replace bridges for Highway 169 over the Minnesota River at Le Sueur and Mankato.

The project involving the Mankato bridge, known as the North Star Bridge, also brought safety improvements. Under the old design, drivers using the bridge to cross from North Mankato to Mankato merged on to Highway 169 from the left and had to quickly cross the main driving lanes to get to the right-side exit to Riverfront Drive in Mankato.

The new design keeps North Mankato-to-Mankato traffic in the right lane the entire way.

The improvements also eliminated a notorious 50-mph curve at the bridge — notorious to truckers at least. Swanson was once on vacation in Waco, Texas, when a trucker spotted the Minnesota license plate and asked where Swanson was from. Upon hearing “Mankato,” he immediately thought of the unforgiving curve.

“He said, ‘I tipped over a load of watermelons in Mankato.’”

Snelling and yelling

A complete reconstruction of a couple of miles of Snelling Avenue in St. Paul had business owners in a panic. The traffic-disrupting project was slated to take two years. Swanson figured out a way to do it in four months, which was great news but generated equally great skepticism.

He had to persuade the city it could be done so quickly and then he had to persuade the property owners along the route. Weekly public meetings were held to answer questions and address concerns once construction started. The first meeting drew 300 people, the second brought 100 and the third resulted in 10.

“They could see we were moving,” Swanson said.

Think ahead

Swanson was a critical force behind a 20 year transportation plan agreed to by Mankato, North Mankato, Blue Earth County and Nicollet County that — 20 years later — left the area with Mankato’s south route (County Road 90), new interchanges on Highway 14, the Victory Drive extension to the north and the new Highway 22.

Several of those projects were key to Mankato’s growth to the northeast, including the area where Menard’s, Home Depot and associated retail stores have sprouted. All of it was one day from not happening.

Swanson was concerned about a planned housing development south of Highway 14 — precisely where he felt new roads were needed to deliver traffic to the back side of River Hills Mall and to open up the northeast side of Mankato for future growth.

He asked Paul and Bill Radichel, the owners of the land, to meet with him. After explaining why the land should be rezoned from residential to commercial, with right-of-way for what would become Victory Drive and Raintree Road, the Radichels agreed and canceled a planned housing development they were set to finalize the next day.

“They said, it’s a good thing you caught us today,” Swanson said.

As for the Radichels’ agreement to give up the housing development, Swanson figures it stemmed partly from their civic boosterism and partly from visions of new economic opportunity.

Turns out the Radichels left the meeting with Swanson and began to lock up the farmland north of Highway 14 that became very valuable in coming years.

“They seemed to be in control of it really fast,” Swanson said.

But it was also a good deal for anyone driving in the River Hills Mall area. Without Raintree and Victory Drive North, Swanson can’t imagine what traffic on Madison Avenue would be like today.

“It’s horrendous anyway,” he said.