U.S. Route 12 in Indiana - History

History

See also: Sauk Trail and Chicago Road

The Old Chicago Road was an important road from 1900 to 1910; it was later renamed the Dunes Highway. The Dunes Highway Association engineers envisioned the Dunes Highway a "state of the art" 40-foot-wide (12 m) concrete highway with a 100-foot (30 m) right-of-way. In August 1919, Commission director H.L. Wright tentatively designated the Dunes Highway as State Road 43, to be 20 feet (6.1 m) wide. Narrower than anticipated, the new concrete highway was still superior to most Indiana roads, which in the mid-1920s were gravel or dirt with paved sections only between the larger towns. Dunes Highway construction began in 1922 under the guidance of Gary contractor Ingwald Moe and construction engineer Ezra Sensibar.

The designation was changed to US 12 and US 20 in 1926 when the U.S. Highway system was created. The two routes were concurrent from Illinois to Michigan City, with the rest in Indiana as only being US 12. In 1930, US 20 was moved to a new aliment south of US 12. This left US 12 on its current alignment without US 20. The route has not change between 1931 and 2002, with only work being maintenance. Then in 2003, the state of Indiana rerouted US 20 onto SR 912 from Columbus Drive to US 20. The route was changed to make room for the Gary/Chicago International Airport runway expansion project.

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