The United States Numbered Highway System is an integrated network of roads and highways numbered within a nationwide grid in the contiguous United States. As the designation and numbering of these highways were coordinated among the states, they are sometimes called Federal Highways, but the roadways were built and have always been maintained by state or local governments since their initial designation in 1926.
The Lincoln Highway is the first transcontinental highway in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway runs coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City west to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, originally through 13 states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. In 1915, the "Colorado Loop" was removed, and in 1928, a realignment relocated the Lincoln Highway through the northern tip of West Virginia. Thus, there are a total of 14 states, 128 counties, and more than 700 cities, towns and villages through which the highway passed at some time in its history.
The system of auto trails was an informal network of marked routes that existed in the United States and Canada in the early part of the 20th century. Marked with colored bands on utility poles, the trails were intended to help travellers in the early days of the automobile.
U.S. Route 2 or U.S. Highway 2 (US 2) is an east–west U.S. Highway spanning 2,571 miles (4,138 km) across the northern continental United States. US 2 consists of two segments connected by various roadways in southern Canada. Unlike some routes, which are disconnected into segments because of encroaching Interstate Highways, the two portions of US 2 were designed to be separate in the original 1926 highway plan.
The Lee Highway was a national auto trail in the United States, connecting New York City and San Francisco, California, via the South and Southwest. After receiving a letter on January 15, 1919, from Dr. Samuel Myrtle Johnson of Roswell, New Mexico, David Carlisle Humphreys of Lexington, Virginia, put out a call for a meeting in Roanoke, Virginia, to form a new national highway association. On December 3, 1919, five hundred men from five states met in Roanoke to officially form the Lee Highway Association. The auto trail was named after Robert E. Lee.
National Old Trails Road, also known as the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, was established in 1912, and became part of the National Auto Trail system in the United States. It was 3,096 miles (4,983 km) long and stretched from Baltimore, Maryland, to California. Much of the route follows the old National Road and the Santa Fe Trail, following its decommission it later became the Western portion of U.S. Route 66.
State Trunk Highway 29 is a state highway running east–west across central Wisconsin. It is a major east–west corridor connecting the Twin Cities and the Chippewa Valley with Wausau and Green Bay. A multi-year project to upgrade the corridor to a four-lane freeway or expressway from Elk Mound to Green Bay was completed in 2005. The expansion served to improve safety on the route, which was over capacity as a two-lane road. The remainder of WIS 29 is two-lane surface road or urban multi-lane road.
The Arrowhead Trail or Arrowhead Highway was the first all-weather road in the Western United States that connected Los Angeles, California to Salt Lake City, Utah by way of Las Vegas, Nevada. Built primarily during the auto trails period of the 1910s, prior to the establishment of the U.S. numbered highway system, the road was replaced in 1926 by U.S. Route 91 (US 91) and subsequently Interstate 15 (I‑15). Small portions of the route in California and Las Vegas, Las Vegas Boulevard, are sometimes still referred to by the name, or as Arrow Highway.
The Good Roads Movement occurred in the United States between the late 1870s and the 1920s. It was the rural dimension of the Progressive movement. A key player was the United States Post Office Department. Once a commitment was made for Rural Free Delivery of the mail, the Post Office had to determine which local roads were suitable and which were not. Farmers living on officially unusable roads now had motivation to get them upgraded. Advocates for improved roads turned local agitation into a national political movement. It started as a coalition between farmers' organizations groups and bicyclists' organizations, such as the League of American Wheelmen. The goal was state and federal spending to improve rural roads. By 1910, automobile lobbies such as the American Automobile Association joined the campaign, coordinated by the National Good Roads Association.
U.S. Highway associations were organizations to promote business and tourism along specific highways. The earliest ones also worked on interconnecting various state highways to create longer, multi-state highways. Since 1990, new associations have formed for preservation of historic highways.
The Nebraska State Highway System consists of all the state highways in Nebraska maintained by the Nebraska Department of Roads. This includes federally designated Interstates and US Highways as well as state highways, links and spurs. The system comprises 9,942 miles (16,000 km) of state highways in all 93 counties. Highways within the system range in scale and quality from 10-lane urban freeways, such as I-80 around Omaha, to standard two-lane rural undivided highways as well as 39 miles (63 km) of state highways that remain unpaved such as N-67 north of Dunbar. Surrounding landscapes along the highway system range from the urban areas in Omaha and Lincoln to scenic journeys through uninhabited grasslands in the Nebraska Sandhills.
The Victory Highway was an auto trail across the United States between New York City and San Francisco, roughly equivalent to the present U.S. Route 40. It was created by the Victory Highway Association, which was organized in 1921 to locate and mark a transcontinental highway to be dedicated to American forces who died in World War I. A series of Victory Eagle sculptures were planned to mark the route, although only a few were actually built and placed.
State Route 906 (SR 906) is a 2.65-mile-long (4.26 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Washington, serving Snoqualmie Pass and its associated ski areas in King and Kittitas counties. The highway travels southeast between two interchanges with Interstate 90 (I-90) in Snoqualmie Pass and Hyak. SR 906 was formed out of segments of the former Sunset Highway that were bypassed by the construction of the controlled-access Interstate Highway over the pass. Between 360 and 2,100 vehicles use the road on an average day in 2012.
U.S. Highway 212 (US 212) within the state of Minnesota travels from the South Dakota state line in the west, crosses the southwestern part of the state, to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area in the east and end at its interchange with US 169 and State Highway 62 (MN 62) in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina. US 212 in Minnesota has an official length of 161.8 miles (260.4 km). It is an urban freeway within the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area and is mostly a two-lane rural road elsewhere in the state.
The Black and Yellow Trail was the promotional name for the portion of U.S. Route 14 (US 14) nominally linking the Black Hills of South Dakota to Yellowstone National Park. The signed auto trail route was extended by promoters to Chicago in the east. In 1919, it was proposed as a brand for a continuous route from Boston, Massachusetts to Seattle, Washington The headquarters for the promotional association were established in Huron, South Dakota with the aim of diverting traffic from the better-known Yellowstone Trail to the north. The Black and Yellow Trail also included portions of US 16, US 20, and US 41.
The Wisconsin State Trunk Highway System is the state highway system of the U.S. state of Wisconsin, including Wisconsin's segments of the Interstate Highway System and the United States Numbered Highway System, in addition to its other state trunk highways. These separate types of highways are respectively designated with an I-, US, or STH- prefix. The system also includes minor roads designated as Scenic Byways, four routes intended to promote tourism to scenic and historic areas of the state; and as Rustic Roads, lightly-traveled and often unpaved local roads which the state has deemed worthy of preservation and protection. The state highway system, altogether totaling 11,753 miles (18,915 km) across all of Wisconsin's 72 counties, is maintained by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT).
U.S. Route 20 is a transcontinental east–west U.S. Highway that travels between Newport, Oregon, and Boston, Massachusetts. It passes through southern Montana for approximately 10 miles (16 km), connecting Targhee Pass at the Idaho state line to the town of West Yellowstone and the western entrance of Yellowstone National Park near the Wyoming border.
In late 1925, the Iowa State Highway Commission, now known as the Iowa Department of Transportation, announced plans to renumber several state highways. The changes to the highway system were a result of the creation of the United States Numbered Highway System. The new U.S. Highways replaced several of the state's primary roads and other routes were renumbered in order to eliminate driver confusion between the two systems. As the new highways were being signed, Iowa's state highways were given a new circular route marker. Previously, the primary road number was stenciled in black onto a telegraph pole over a band of yellow paint.
U.S. Bicycle Route 30 (USBR 30) is an east–west U.S. Bicycle Route. As of August 2021, it consists of three segments, running though North Dakota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in the United States.
