History
Improvements to the Columbia River Highway and Old Oregon Trail Highway had been planned since the 1930s, but World War II delayed those plans. The Oregon State Highway Division started implementing these improvements segment by segment beginning in the 1950s as bond funding became available. One of the segments completed in the early 1950s was the Banfield Expressway in Portland.
When the Federal Interstate and Defense Highways Act was passed in 1956, U.S. Route 30 was scheduled to be superseded by Interstate 80N, on an alignment closer to the river on flat terrain. The segment between Portland and The Dalles was mostly complete by 1963, but it would take until 1969 for construction of the highway to meet Interstate highway standards. The highway was designated Interstate 80N until May 1980, when it was changed to Interstate 84 to eliminate confusion with the western section of the non-suffixed I-80, which split from I-80N in Salt Lake City and continued west to San Francisco as I-80. Construction on the remaining segments continued until July 3, 1980, when the segment of Interstate 84 from Portland to the Idaho border was completed to Interstate standards.
Read more about this topic: Interstate 84 In Oregon
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