Portal:U.S. roads/Selected article/January 2013

I-80 rolling through western Iowa

Interstate 80 (I-80) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. In Iowa, the highway travels west to east through the center of the state. It enters the state at the Missouri River in Council Bluffs and heads east through the southern Iowa drift plain. In the Des Moines area, I-80 meets up with I-35 and the two routes bypass Des Moines together. In Ankeny, the interstates split and I-80 continues east. In eastern Iowa, it provides access to the University of Iowa in Iowa City. I-80 passes along the northern edge of Davenport and Bettendorf and leaves Iowa via the Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge over the Mississippi River into Illinois. The I-80 corridor was originally served by two competing auto trails, the Great White Way and the River-to-River Road, which later became U.S. Route 32 (US 32) in 1926 and then US 6. In the early 1950s, plans were drawn up to build a limited-access road called the Iowa Turnpike until the Interstate Highway System was created in 1956. Construction of I-80 took place over 14 years, with the road being opened in parts between 1958 and 1972. By the 1980s, I-80 had fallen into disrepair in Iowa and across the country. Federal funding was freed up in 1985 to allow reconstruction of the highway.

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