U.S. Route 1 in Pennsylvania - History

History

In Chester County, before the US 1 expressway was built there, US 1 continued up Baltimore Pike (which now has a dead-end section in Nottingham where northbound US 1 veers away from the Baltimore Pike alignment onto the expressway). In Oxford, US 1 northbound ran on S. 3rd Street, then turned right on Market Street (PA 472) (N. 3rd Street is the beginning of PA 10), then very quickly turned left onto Lincoln Street, and after leaving Oxford the road ran by Lincoln University. Approaching Avondale, Baltimore Pike traffic bent southeast along Pennsylvania Avenue (PA 41), then Baltimore Pike split off after Avondale. In the town of Kennett Square, northbound US 1 ran along Cypress Street (southbound US 1 ran along State Street), and those streets were marked E-W, not N-S. After Kennett Square, the US 1 expressway ends and its traffic merges onto Baltimore Pike.

Except for the southernmost part of Baltimore Pike at Nottingham, the Chester County part of old US 1 is still driveable. There is the dead end mentioned above; also, a small part of Baltimore Pike is permanently blocked by the Herr's Snacks company property.

Between Philadelphia and Trenton, US 1 is a part of the Lincoln Highway, a cross-country road that ran from New York City to San Francisco, California. It was also a part of the Byberry and Bensalem Turnpike between Oakford (Neshaminy Creek) and Philadelphia.

From the Lancaster Turnpike, where the Lincoln Highway headed west along U.S. Route 30, the Lincoln Highway originally headed east along Market Street to Penn Square, where it turned north onto Broad Street (Prior to the building of Roosevelt Boulevard, the main road followed Frankford Avenue to Bustleton Avenue from downtown.)

A bypass was added around downtown Philadelphia (in addition to the downtown route) in 1924, using Hunting Park Avenue, Ridge Avenue and City Avenue. This alignment is now used by U.S. 1, except that Hunting Park and Ridge Avenues are now bypassed by the Roosevelt Expressway and Schuylkill Expressway.

From Broad Street, the Lincoln Highway then headed north on the Roosevelt Boulevard. By 1914, the Roosevelt Boulevard was completed to Rhawn Street, and the Lincoln Highway turned off the Boulevard there to reach Bustleton Avenue. The old alignment splits from Bustleton Avenue at Haldeman Avenue and then follows Roosevelt Boulevard. (A short piece of Old Bustleton Avenue southwest of Welsh Road was used, crossing Pennypack Creek east of the current bridge.)

A 1920 extension took the Boulevard to Welsh Road, allowing traffic to turn off Bustleton Avenue there (that route is still Route 532), and a 1920s extension took it to the intersection with Old Lincoln Highway just north of the Poquessing Creek bridge. North of there the present US 1 was completed in 1933 to the south end of the 1923 Langhorne bypass and in 1938 to Bellevue Avenue (Route 413) in downtown Langhorne.

From near Hornig Road in Northeast Philadelphia, the old alignment heads through woods, closed to traffic, paralleling power lines, after which it was upgraded on the spot to become Roosevelt Boulevard. The original route is then gated at an 1805 stone bridge across Poquessing Creek at the Philadelphia city line, just before crossing Roosevelt Boulevard. After crossing Street Road, the Old Lincoln Highway then becomes one-way southbound past the Bristol Road intersection and crosses the Neshaminy Creek. (This bridge itself was built in 1921 to replace a covered bridge just to the west.)

The present route of Lincoln Highway and US 1 Business was built in 1923, bypassing Langhorne to the south and avoiding two railroad crossings. This crosses under the US 1 freeway just south of the railroad, where the older route had crossed the railroad. From Oakford, the Old Lincoln Highway heads northeast, no longer crossing SEPTA's West Trenton line, as the US 1 freeway crosses just to the east. It then headed onto Maple Avenue (Route 213) to pass through Langhorne. Past Langhorne, the original route used what is presently known as Lincoln Highway (U.S. Route 1 Business).

At Fallsington, the original road crossed the Pennsylvania Railroad's Trenton Cutoff on a bridge just east of the present bridge, built on a reverse curve to shorten the span. It used Trenton Road and Main Street from the bridge to the intersection with Woolston, where Main Street is now cut. In 1917, an underpass under the railroad was built to the west on Woolston Drive; this became the main route by 1924.

It then headed toward Morrisville, where it first crossed the Delaware River the Calhoun Street Bridge, running along Trenton Avenue to Fallsington. In 1920 it was moved to the Bridge Street Bridge, passing through downtown Morrisville.