Wilbur Cross Highway

The Wilbur Cross Highway is the designation for the portion of old Route 15 from Wethersfield in Connecticut, through Hartford and Manchester, to the Massachusetts Turnpike in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. The highway was built in the 1940s before the Interstate Highway era. When I-84 from Hartford to Sturbridge (then known as I-86) was commissioned in 1970, it was routed along and co-signed with the Wilbur Cross Highway from East Hartford to the state line. In 1980, the planned extension of I-84 to Providence was cancelled and I-84 was then routed along the Wilbur Cross Highway instead. At the same time, Route 15 was truncated to end at I-84. The Wilbur Cross Highway was originally built as a continuation of the Merritt Parkway and Wilbur Cross Parkway, but with the opening of Interstate 91, the planned segment between Meriden and Hartford was never built, and Connecticut Route 15 was instead routed along the Berlin Turnpike.