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Interstate 80 ('I-80') is the second-longest Interstate Highway in the United States (following Interstate 90). I-80 connects downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. I-80 is the Interstate Highway that most closely approximates the route of the historic Lincoln Highway, the first road across America. This Interstate Highway roughly traces other historically significant travel routes in the Western United States: the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska, the California Trail across most of Nevada and California, and except in the Great Salt Lake area, the entire route of the First Transcontinental Railroad. From near Chicago, Illinois, east to near Youngstown, Ohio, Interstate 80 is a toll road - containing a portion of the Indiana Toll Road and the majority of the Ohio Turnpike. At Youngstown, I-80 leaves the toll road, which continues as Interstate 76 toward Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. I-80 becomes the Keystone Shortway, a freeway built across rural northern Pennsylvania expressly for I-80. For some years, the tollway through to Philadelphia was called as Interstate '80S', but this highway was renumbered as Interstate 76 in 1972 as a part of a move to eliminate all designations such as I-80S and I-80N. The only ones in the United States which remain are I-35W and I-35E - which both exist in Minnesota and Texas. In this process, I-76 came into existence in both Pennsylvania and Colorado. I-80 merges in with I-90 near Elyria, Ohio, westbound, and these Interstate Highways share a common roadway all the way to Portage, Indiana, where I-90 forks off. However, I-80 next runs concurrently with Interstate 94 from that point through the town of South Holland, Illinois in southern Cook County, Illinois. I-80 then shares the roadway with Interstate 294 from that point through the town of Markham, Illinois, also in southern Cook County. (At that point, I-294 turns due north towards Wisconsin, and I-80 continues all the way to San Francisco.) |
