U.S. Route 52 in West Virginia - West Huntington Expressway

West Huntington Expressway

The West Huntington Expressway is a controlled access elevated highway that crosses the west end of Huntington WV. It was constructed in 1965 and originally signed as West Virginia Route 94. The first segment to open was a stub from Interstate 64 to Jefferson Avenue in West Huntington in the fall of 1965. This included a bridge over a CSX railroad mainline. In the early 1970s, the expressway was extended northward across what is now the Nick Joe Rahall II Bridge across the Ohio River to U.S. Highway 52/State Route 7 in Ohio.

Tolls were collected at the Ohio River bridge until the mid 1980s. The expressway has four lanes from Interstate 64 to the U.S. Highway 60 interchange, where it drops to two lanes for the remainder of the highway, which includes the Ohio River bridge. The expressway was renumbered U.S. Route 52 in 1979 when that federal highway was re-routed out of downtown Huntington to a new alignment on I-64 west to the Tolsia Highway south of Kenova.