Fort Road & Manning Drive

Fort Road is a discontinuous roadway that runs in a southwest to northeast direction in the northeastern Edmonton. As the city of Edmonton expanded its grid street system, portions of Fort Road ceased to exist. Fort Road is divided into three major sections:

• the southern section between 112 Avenue northeast to Wayne Gretzky Drive is a collector road through established residential neighbourhoods;
• the central section between Wayne Gretzky Drive / Yellowhead Trail and 137 Avenue is a 4-6 lane arterial road, where it is the northern continuation of Wayne Gretzky Drive and is a southern continuation of Manning Drive; and
• the northern section north of 153 Avenue is a rural road segmented by Anthony Henday Drive, finally terminating at 227 Avenue, near Manning Drive. As northeastern Edmonton has developed, sections of have been completely removed.

At the intersection of Fort Road and 66 Street stands the Transit Hotel, which opened in 1908.[3] This is in the Village of North Edmonton, annexed by the City of Edmonton in 1912.

Nearby Victoria Trail is built on a different trail that also was part of the Carlton Trail network. Where Victoria Trail ends, at 153 Avenue, Fort Road is nearby.

Another portion of the historic Fort Trail exists in Sturgeon County. Old Fort Trail comes off Manning Drive not far from where Fort Road terminated at 227 Avenue. It runs to the former crossing of the North Saskatchewan River into Fort Saskatchewan. The 1905 bridge was replaced for car traffic by a new bridge built in 1957 and then finally dismantled in the late 1980s. The bridge's piers still stand in the river, near the end of Old Fort Trail.

Manning Drive is a limited-access road and the northern continuation of the central section of Fort Road. Beginning at 137 Avenue, it continues northeast and carries the urban section of Alberta Highway 15. The section of Manning Drive between 137 Avenue and 153 Avenue contains a wide median where the lanes could be converted to diamond interchange ramps; however there are no current plans to convert it to a freeway. North of Anthony Henday Drive, Manning Drive is a rural highway despite being located within Edmonton city limits.

Manning Drive was constructed in 1972 when Highway 15 was realigned from the historic Fort Road. At the time of construction, the majority of the roadway was located Sturgeon County, outside Edmonton city limits; [4] the remainder became part of Edmonton as part of the 1982 general annexation. Originally named Manning Freeway, it was renamed to Manning Drive in the mid-1980s.[5]