The AARoads Blog

Some notes and photos from a holiday drive northward from the Gulf Coast area to Iowa. Day 1 focused on the Interstate 55 corridor northward to Sikeston, Missouri. The day started out foggy, with lots of standing water from recent floodwaters over southern Mississippi. The the sun shined northward to Grenada, where murky skies set in and remained in place throughout the week

U.S. 84 shifted from its Main Street alignment through Collins onto a new four-lane bypass north of town. The old alignment was redesignated Mississippi 184. A new partial-cloverleaf interchange joins U.S. 49 with the relocated U.S. 84.

U.S. 49’s approach to Interstates 20 and 55 at Richland was upgraded to an expressway recently. The controlled-access route bypasses some of the businesses, now served by frontage roads, from the split with Old Highway 49 north to U.S. 49’s merge onto Interstate 20 west & 55 south.

Interstates 20 & 55 westbound near their split in south Jackson. Road work is underway presently to replace the westbound bridge over U.S. 51 / State Street.

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Speaking of places that aaroads does not cover in too much detail, we’d like to introduce a new Kentucky page. So far, only I-64 and Lexington’s New Circle Road are posted but all Louisville area freeways, and a few other roadways in the “Golden Triangle” area of the state are coming soon Edit: They’re all up now! I’d like to especially thank the Louisville Courier-Journal for the use of their extensive archives. I really enjoyed seeing the interstates of the Bluegrass State, and I hope to get some more time in there soon.
Arkansas is also forthcoming!

Interstate 540 is a two-parter. The southern section runs from the Oklahoma state line and bypasses Fort Smith and runs over the wide Arkansas River to end at I-40 northeast of the city. The newer, northern section, runs north from I-40 to the state’s northwest metro area. Continuing on our future-Interstate-49 trend, lets take a look at I-540 in Arkansas.

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Ahh, Texarkana. They say it is “twice as nice” but it is not “twice as many interstates nice” because I-49 is not here yet. Regardless of your maps, the freeway stretching south of Texarkana is signed only as AR 549. No “Future I-49″ signs here, no sir. Here it is, plus some AR 245 goodness.

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