Look Close – Every Single Sign for This Michigan Highway Is Wrong

It's the kind of thing most drivers pass right by without a second thought or perhaps even a single glance - the myriad signs that pass by along a highway. For one highway in Northern Michigan, you may start to look with a sideways, cocked-neck stare when you realize that seemingly every single sign is printed incorrectly.

The highway is M-38 which runs the entire base of the Keweenaw Peninsula 42 miles from Baraga to Ontonagon. And all along that stretch the signs that remind you that you're on M-38 or that point drivers to M-38 are all wrong. What's the issue? Unlike other road signs were the letters and numbers are at a clean 90 degree angle, every single instance of '38' is tilted with the 3 and 8 just askew enough to catch the eye. The M is correctly placed, just the numerals. And it's every single shield.

👇🏼SEE BELOW - THE ONLY DESTINATION FOR THESE MICHIGAN HIGHWAYS ARE STATE PARKS👇🏼

The photo above is the first westbound marker in Baraga. Here's how the east end of the highway looks, also in Baraga where M-38 meets US-41.

M-38 meets M-28 midway through its journey in the Western Upper Peninsula. There are some properly aligned M-38 signs here, but off-kilter ones as well.

READ MORE: There's a Historic Bridge in Northern Michigan the Department of Transpiration Maintains for Snowmobile Use Only

M-38's west end happens where it meets US-45 and M-64 in Ontonagon. Here again - the numbers just aren't aligned within the diamond.

A visitor to the UP caught the highway oddity and shared it to a Facebook group dedicated to strange sighs along America's highways.

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I’ve now driven the entire length of M-38 in both directions twice, and it took me until this year to notice this issue with the type on the assurance markers....Every single M-38 shield along the road in both directions had misaligned font (except, apparently where the road is concurrent with M-2[8])… and it looks like the signs have been in place since 2018.

One comment speculated that perhaps a batch of signs was done incorrectly and rather than re-do or scrap that metal, they install the signs anyway. Another was surprised by the subtleness of the error

This kind of thing normally sticks out to me like a sore thumb, but I don’t think I’d have noticed this one. Something about the diamond shape makes it less obvious. Good eye!

So should you find yourself in the rural western UP on M-38, take a look at a batch of highway signs that don't look like anything else in Michigan.