US 61 ran from the Canadian border to New Orleans, and is the road to which musician and Duluth native Bob Dylan referred in the album and song Highway 61 Revisited.

The route stays close to the rocky North Shore, offering spectacular vistas of the lake to the southeast as it skirts along the foothills of the Sawtooth Range to the northwest.

MN 61 serves as a northeast–southwest route in northeast Minnesota between Duluth, Two Harbors, Silver Bay, Grand Marais, and the Canadian border.

21 miles (34 km) of MN 61 from Duluth to Two Harbors is a four-lane expressway officially designated the Arthur Rohweder Memorial Highway.

The northern terminus for MN 61 is at the Canadian border, where it becomes Ontario Highway 61 upon entering Canada at the Pigeon River Bridge; the roadway continues to Thunder Bay.

During that year, US 61 was decommissioned from the Canadian border south to its present-day junction with I-35 at the city of Wyoming near Forest Lake.

The section of MN 61 from Hovland to the Pigeon River formerly ran inland, bypassing the community of Grand Portage.