History
In 1994, the original contract with Fluor Daniel called for six lanes from U.S. 17 to SC 905 and four lanes the rest of the way to U.S. 501. This money depended on a one-cent sales tax devoted to road funding, but voters turned that down.
A bridge was built over the Intracoastal Waterway near Briarcliffe Acres, but it remained the "Bridge to Nowhere" for three years because there was no money to build the road. In February 1999, the South Carolina Senate passed a bill naming the bridge for Billy Alford, state highway commissioner from 1990 to 1994 and commission chair in 1993.
On February 24, 1999, the South Carolina Department of Transportation Commission approved $95 million to make the bypass four lanes. Two years earlier, since money was short, the bypass had been reduced to two lanes beyond SC 90, though the $291.3 million project had six lanes to SC 31.
Even with the changes, the road would end up being cheaper than planned because of narrower shoulders and bridges, and more bridges over wetlands.
On March 4, 1999, The Joint Bond Review Committee approved selling bonds for the money approved in February. Widening the bridges was considered, since some believed that the road could need six lanes in only a few years.
In June 2000, the first section of the Conway Bypass opened 17 months sooner than expected despite flooding from Hurricane Floyd. In November 2000, the section from SC 90 to SC 905, including a 29-foot-high bridge over the Waccamaw River, opened 13 months sooner than planned. The final section opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony in May 2001.
In 2003, the South Carolina General Assembly approved a resolution asking that the Conway Bypass be designated I-73.
Read more about this topic: South Carolina Highway 22
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—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)