I’ve driven large sections of almost all of these over the decades, but none of them end to end. Closest I’ve come is I-10, but I broke off to head south on the turnpike before I got to Jacksonville. Have to say I’m surprised that they’ve never bypassed Breezewood (which I remember from the turnpike as a kid driving from Michigan to New York in the sixties). I guess tunneling the mountain would be too much of a PITA and disruptive to residents.
4 thoughts on “Interstates”
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I may be taking most of I-90 from Seattle to Boston next year as I move to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project.
The goofy thing is, they re-tunneled the Turnpike just east of Breezewood back in the mid-Sixties, bypassing the old Sideling Hill and Rays Hill tunnels. The “abandoned Turnpike” stretch is used these days to film post-apocalyptic scenes – like The Road.
For whatever reason, they didn’t chose to convert the Breezewood interchange into a modern multi-level cloverleaf at that time. Partially because there just isn’t that much flat land to spare in that valley, and partially due to local business interests. Pretty much everybody stops for lunch at Breezewood if they’re driving I-70 or the Turnpike through that stretch.
Then again, there’s I-115 in Butte, about 1/2 mile long. I’ve driven the entire length of that one.
I remember when they “completed” I-70 in Colorado. They were running it through Glenwood Canyon, keeping US6 open on the same path while they did so. They had to blast tunnels and build double-decker bridges in some places. It was quite a piece of work, which is why it was kept for last.
I had driven it around August of 1992 and there were construction crews everywhere, detours, and a couple of instances of one-way traffic with flagmen. So I was very happy to hear them declare it open in October – there was a full-court media press on this, set around a big opening ceremony.
Of course, when I drove it a month or two later, there was still just as much construction as there had been during the summer. So why the ceremony? Election Day, of course – somebody wanted to take credit for something before facing the voters.
This is a common trick in election season. They pulled the same trick a year of two later with the C470 project southwest of Denver. So, keep an eye out for the “Declare Victory!” crowd this time of year. They are, at best, optimistic.