Something About Winona Post Road

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road may get you there.

I was recently rereading Ben McLeod's comments about John Bellairs in Minnesota. McLeod knew early on Bellairs was writing about a Winona-clone known as Hoosac in The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn but couldn't convince anyone else there was a connection: 

I cannot describe to you the frisson of reading a book about a mysterious library and a treasure hidden within while sitting in the very library being described. As I read more of the Anthony Monday books certain particulars made it very, very clear that Hoosac was in fact Winona. When I tried to point out to parents and librarians that these books were about our town, I was met with disinterested disbelief. Adults simply assumed that I was projecting myself onto the characters of the books.

McLeod wrote a further piece about Bellairs and Hoosac back in 2017 for the Winona Post:

In The Dark Secret of Weatherend, Miss Eells and Anthony travel to an estate sale near a small town called Rolling Stone, and go on a drive down the memorably-named Winona Post Road.

Winona Post Road is what caught my eye. This road is the one time in any of the Anthony Monday series where Bellairs slips and gives readers a clue to Hoosac's origins. We've discussed Hoosac-is-Winona connections in the past. Should the road have been Hoosac Post Road, or was Bellairs deliberately calling attention to Winona for some reason?

And strangely enough, I now see Winona Post Road may be a fictional road. I always assumed a real Winona Post Road existed, but I cannot find such a thing. There doesn't have to be a real-world inspiration for every little thing, of course. Minnesota State Highway 248 looks probable. However, the book sounds as if Anthony and Miss Eells are headed away from Rolling Stone into the countryside. The city or county may have renamed it sometime in the 60+ years since Bellairs lived there, too. 

All searches yield the local newspaper, the Winona Post, reporting road closures, road conditions, and related road-whatnot. All said, does anyone want to take a stab on where the road would have been?