Decommissioned highway

Largely in the United States of America, as the states build freeways as a new classification of highways, the state may strip the old highway of its old designation as a numbered highway or downgrade it to a 'lesser' status. This is especially common in the United States of America, where as an extreme example, U.S. Highway 66, which connected Chicago and Los Angeles from 1926 until 1972, lost its designation as a U.S. Highway in stages until it disappeared altogether in 1986 in favor of faster, more direct Interstate highways. Some state highways may be partly, such as Michigan State Highway 21 or wholly (the older Arizona State Highway 79) decommissioned in favor of newer Interstate routes. A U.S. state is any one of the fifty states (four of which officially favor the term commonwealth) which, together with the District of Columbia and Palmyra Atoll (an uninhabited incorporated unorganized territory), form the United States of America. ... A typical rural freeway (Interstate 5 in the Central Valley of California, USA). ... A highway is a major road within a city, or linking several cities together. ... U.S. Highway 66 or Route 66 was and is the most famous road in the U.S. Highway system and quite possibly the most famous and storied highway in the world. ... Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... This article is about the largest city in California. ... Current U.S. Highway shield The United States Highway System is an integrated system of roads in the United States numbered within a nationwide grid. ... A typical rural stretch of Interstate highway, with two lanes in each direction separated by a large grassy median, and with cross-traffic limited to overpasses and underpasses. ... Michigan State Highway 21 or M-21, is an east-west highway in the U.S. state of Michigan connecting the cities of Grand Rapids and Flint. ... Arizona State Highway 79, or AZ-79, is one of two different north-south highways in Arizona. ...

At times the road itself is incorporated into the newer route. Interstate 44 between Springfield, Missouri and the western suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri assumed much of the old divided surface highway of Route 66 as it was upgraded to full freeway. Segments of the old surface road through a town may be redesignated as "business routes" of the newer highway, highways of a "lower" classification (as in Arizona State Highway 66) or as unnumbered local roads. At times the highway that the superhighway supplants may be demolished so that it cannot be used for such illicit purposes as impromptu drag racing or as an airstrip for drug traffickers, particularly in the thinly-populated areas of the western United States in which the resources of law enforcement might be pointlessly overstretched. Interstate 44 is an interstate highway in the central United States. ... Springfield is the third largest city in Missouri. ... The Gateway Arch, shown here behind the Old Courthouse, is the most recognizable part of the St. ... Arizona State Highway 66, or AZ-66 is a surface-road, a relic of the now-decommissioned U.S. Highway 66 lying in northwestern Arizona, the only part of old US 66 in Arizona to have Arizona state highway markers. ... Drag racing is a form of auto racing in which cars or motorcycles attempt to complete a fairly short, straight and level course in the shortest amount of time. ... Retail selling Street selling is the bottom of the chain and can be accomplished through purchasing from prostitutes, through cloaked retail stores or refuse houses for users in the act located in red-light districts which often also deal in paraphernalia, dealers marketing merriment at night clubs and other events... For the band, see The Police. ...

Where superhighways supplant all but a terminal section of a highway in one state, that short segment may itself be reduced in status. Michigan State Highway 25, originally part of the older U.S. Highway 25 illustrates this tendency. Michigan 25 remains quite useful for those people who travel through the shoreline communities along Lake Huron; they find the designation of the route useful even if the fiction that the highway remains a long-distance route to Cincinnati, Ohio and beyond is no longer a necessity. Michigan 25, or M-25, is a highway of an arc-like shape closely following the Thumb of the eastern Lower Peninsula of Michigan along Lake Huron between Port Huron, Michigan (junction Interstate 94, Interstate 69, and Business Loop 94) and Bay City, Michigan (junction Interstate 75, U.S. Highway... U.S. Highway 25 is a north-south US highway in the eastern United States of America that now connects Cincinnati, Ohio at the Ohio River to Brunswick, Georgia near the Atlantic Ocean. ... The Great Lakes from space; Lake Huron is the third from the left. ... Cincinnati, Ohio viewed from the SW, across the Ohio River from Kentucky. ...

Intrastate U.S. highways, such as old U.S. Highway 230 between Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Lancaster, Pennsylvania are often reduced to state highways. U.S. Highway 230 was a short, but regionally-important east-west highway in southeastern Pennsylvania between Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where it met its parent, U.S. Highway 30. ... Dowtown Harrisburg and the Susquehanna River Pennsylvania State Capitol Building Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania, a state of the United States of America. ... Lancaster is a city located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. ...

Superhighways, although generally much safer and easier to drive, necessitate a more decisive manner of driving than do the older highways on which motorists generally stop at the intersections of numbered highways; at higher speeds and without the possibility of stopping at the junction, motorists must decide earlier that they wish to exit the superhighway. Multiple designations for the same highway, whether on the superhighway itself or on the intersecting road, often contribute to severe accidents due to the confusion that they might impose upon an unwary motorist. The extreme violations of this principle, as in the unusual multiplexes, each defunct, of US 60/70/80/89/AZ-93 through Phoenix, Arizona, US 66/91/395 near San Bernardino, California, especially where it met US 70/99, or even US 60/70/99 through California's Coachella Valley, permissible for political reasons in the era of surface highways, would be hazards at superhighway speeds. Phoenix (Oodham: Skikik) was incorporated as a city on February 5, 1881. ... San Bernardino is the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. ... Coachella Valley The Coachella Valley is an irrigated agricultural and recreational desert valley in southern California east of Los Angeles. ...

Even as superhighways supplant older surface routes as through routes, some historical highways get attention from those with antiquarian (and commercial) interests in the continued recognition of such routes. Route 66 in the midwestern and southwestern United States is a prime example of such efforts; "Historic Route US 66" markers, completely unofficial, designate most of the old surface road, some of which has literary significance (as in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath). John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck III (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was one of the most famous American novelists of the 20th century. ...