Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania - History

History

The corridor now served by I-80 was originally to be a branch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Sharon to Stroudsburg. Planning was shifted to the Pennsylvania Department of Highways in 1956 with the passage of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act.

In early plans for the Interstate Highway System, the connection across northern Pennsylvania would have paralleled U.S. Route 6N and U.S. Route 6 from what became Interstate 90 near West Springfield, Pennsylvania east to Scranton. (From Scranton east to Hartford, Connecticut, Interstate 84 was built parallel to US 6.) From Scranton a route went southeast along U.S. Route 611 to the Stroudsburg area, and then east along U.S. Route 46 to near New York City. On May 22, 1957, a request by Pennsylvania to move the corridor south was approved by the Federal Highway Administration. (The Scranton-Stroudsburg connection was kept, and the new alignment merged with it west of Stroudsburg.) However, when the initial numbers were assigned later that year, they were drawn on a 1947 map, and so the corridor across northern Pennsylvania became part of Interstate 84, while the Scranton-New York route became Interstate 82. (I-80 ran along the Pennsylvania Turnpike - later Interstate 80S - to Harrisburg, where it split into I-80S to Philadelphia and I-80N (later Interstate 78) to New York.) This was corrected the next year, as the Keystone Shortway became part of I-80, and the southern route became I-80S (later I-76) and I-78. I-84 was truncated to Scranton, and the Scranton-Stroudsburg connection became Interstate 81E (later renumbered Interstate 380).

The first section of present I-80 to open was the Delaware Water Gap Toll Bridge, opened December 16, 1953. This had been built as part of U.S. Route 611 and connected back to its old alignment soon after crossing into Pennsylvania. Construction on the rest of I-80 began in 1959 and was completed in 1970.

In 1993, exit 43 (now exit 284) of I-80, which serves the Pocono Raceway, was designated the Richard Petty Interchange in honor of the NASCAR legend that drove the #43 car.

On March 7, 2011, the supporting wall on the eastbound I-80 bridge over Sullivan Trail in Tannersville collapsed from snow and rain. As a result, eastbound I-80 was reduced to one lane and Sullivan Trail was closed.