The first alignment of US 41 in Wisconsin, which extended south from Marinette to the Illinois state line, was defined generally by two state trunk highways in existence in 1926:
WIS 15 from Marinette to Milwaukee, and
WIS 57 from Milwaukee to the Illinois state line. Signs for the newly established highway were to be placed in spring of 1927. A meeting of the Wisconsin Highway Commission in 1926 decided that no new U.S. Highway number would overlap with an existing state route number; therefore,
WIS 41 was retired and renumbered when US 41 came into existence. By 1955, US 41 was relocated from the corridor of today's
WIS 175 and its successors to a nearby expressway in
Winnebago,
Fond du Lac,
Dodge,
Washington,
Waukesha, and
Milwaukee Counties. In
Green Bay, the road was rerouted in 1953 to make a curve to the right west of
De Pere, going onto Ashland Avenue to the Green Bay city limits. It then turned left onto Highland Avenue (after 1968, Lombardi Avenue), going past
Lambeau Field and curving right onto Military Avenue. It then turned left at Velp Avenue. US 41 then followed present day Velp Avenue north to Suamico where it merged with what is now the US 41 freeway. Until 1968 this was the outer highway for Green Bay; the area now is urbanized. The 1953–1968 Green Bay bypass was once again bypassed, sequentially, with the present US 41 freeway beginning at Velp, southerly to Lombardi in 1968; Velp north to Suamico in 1971; then from Lombardi south to De Pere in 1974. Additionally, in the 2000s, the highway was widened to an expressway from Abrams to just west of Marinette, and included freeway bypasses around the cities of
Oconto and
Peshtigo. ==Exit list==