New York State Route 10 - History

History

In 1908, the New York State Legislature designated the primary north–south roadway along the west bank of the Hudson River from the New Jersey state line near New York City to Albany, now largely US 9W, as Route 3, an unsigned legislative route. When the first set of posted routes in New York were assigned in 1924, all of legislative Route 3 became part of the new NY 10, which initially began at the New Jersey state line and ended in Saranac Lake. North of Albany, the route followed modern NY 5, NY 50, and NY 9N through Schenectady and Saratoga Springs to reach the North Country at Lake George. Past this point, NY 10 continued north on what is now US 9, NY 8, NY 28, NY 28N, and NY 30 to Tupper Lake via Chestertown, Wevertown, North Creek, and Long Lake. At Tupper Lake, the route headed east on current NY 3 to Wawbeek before taking a more circuitous route to Saranac Lake by way of modern NY 30, NY 186, and NY 86.

The first change to the routing of NY 10 came by 1926 when NY 10 was extended northeastward over modern NY 3 to Plattsburgh, where it terminated at NY 30 (now NY 22). The route was truncated one year later when US 9W was assigned to the portion of NY 10 between New Jersey and Albany. NY 10 was subsequently truncated to the former western terminus of its overlap with NY 5 in Schenectady. In the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, NY 10 was significantly reconfigured to begin in Deposit and end at the Canadian border north of Malone. The only segment of NY 10 not altered by the realignment, which utilized a combination of previously numbered routes and unsigned roadways, was the piece between Long Lake and Lake Clear Junction.

From Deposit to Stamford, NY 10 supplanted NY 51, a highway assigned in the mid-1920s. Farther north, the portion from Palatine Bridge to Indian Lake was originally part of NY 80, a route created in the late 1920s. Past Indian Lake, NY 10 followed what had been part of NY 10A to Long Lake, where it connected to its pre-1930 alignment. The section of modern NY 10 between Stamford and Palatine Bridge was previously unnumbered. North of Lake Clear Junction, the route followed the pre-1930 routing of NY 3 from Paul Smiths to Malone and two previously unnumbered highways between Lake Clear Junction and Paul Smiths and from Malone to the Canadian border. NY 10 was truncated to its current northern terminus in Arietta and largely replaced with NY 30 north of Speculator c. 1960.