Pennsylvania state routes, 1911-1931

[NE2]

This builds on the information compiled by Tim Reichard: http://www.m-plex.com/roads/numbering.html
Some of this is educated guesses, while much comes from various maps:
http://www.mapsofpa.com/art9pics/1927-272-3.jpg (only 1/4 of the map is scanned)
http://www.mapsofpa.com/art9pics/1928-1131-2.jpg
http://www.mapsofpa.com/art9pics/1929-375-2.jpg
http://www.mapsofpa.com/art9pics/1930-1173-2.jpg
http://www.mapsofpa.com/stateofficial/1933_1243.jpg
http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Internet/Bureaus/pdPlanRes.nsf/infoBPRHistoricCountyMaps
http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Internet/Bureaus/pdPlanRes.nsf/infoBPRHistoricTransportationMaps
http://research.archives.gov/description/821491
http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?c=darlmaps&type=boolean&rgn1=ic_all&view=thumbnail&med=1&q1=allegheny+1929&button1=Go
and state laws: http://neroute2.blogspot.com/2013/09/pennsylvania-state-route-laws_4.html http://books.google.com/books?id=baUrAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA7342


Prior to 1911, the only (?) state involvement in roads was with state aid to local governments for improvements. These received sequential numbers, shown on later maps as legislative routes with an A or SAA (state aid application) prefix, where not included in legislatively-defined routes.

In 1911 the Sproul Road Bill was passed. This had 296 routes, roughly clustered, all running from one county seat to another or to the state line. Not all routes were direct; sometimes they twisted across each other to include cross connections in the system. (For example, look at 140-141 in Lebanon County or 168-169-171 in Monroe County on the 1911 map.) A 1913 amendment added routes 297-374, which did not all serve county seats. Other than amendments to existing routes, and a few additions that were not assigned numbers by the legislature (375 south of Gettysburg, 1915; 995 through Mount Gretna, 1921; 380 from Leeper to Kane, 1923; 762 from Chester to Philadelphia, 1923), the next additions were made in 1925 (375 to 544) and 1927 (545 to 760). Note that 375 and 380 were duplicated (I don't know if the numbers in between were used), and so was 545 (first one added by the legislature without a number in 1925, second with a number in 1927). Two numbers, 476 and 490, were skipped due to amendments between the original 1923 bill vetoed by the governor and the version passed in 1925, but somehow 490 was resurrected as LR 761 despite not being in the 1927 law.

These numbers were probably never signed, and would not have as useful for navigation as a new system, given the large number of overlaps to reach county seats. In 1924-25, the state began to number major routes for public use: http://www.m-plex.com/roads/numberearly.html By the time the 1927 map was published, every legislative route that existed by 1925 (but not any state aid route) had been given a one- or two-digit number, with many of the numbers in disjoint pieces across the state.

With the large number of new legislative routes added in 1927, the state decided to do a major renumbering, which seems to have taken place at the beginning of 1928. Some of the numbers were kept, but new systems of children and spurs (as Tim calls them) were added: http://www.m-plex.com/roads/numberchi.html http://www.m-plex.com/roads/numberspur.html Children began at the parent or another child, and usually ended at another route, but may have had a hanging end. Spurs had either a hanging end or looped back to the same route. Some were assigned to entirely disconnected segments of the state highway system, numbered based on a nearby route. Two spurs (913 and 926) did not have a hanging end but had gaps in the middle.

As best as I can tell, a preliminary numbering was worked out in 1927, but changes between then and 1928 forced some imperfections onto the system. I have seen no maps that show these preliminary numbers, and only one partial map that shows the final state routes assigned to U.S. Routes (http://www.mapsofpa.com/roadcart/1928kendallmap.jpg http://www.mapsofpa.com/art5pics/1928phila3.jpg). So much of this is educated guesswork. Again, this did not include any state aid routes, but every section of legislative route was assigned a traffic route number (with the possible exception of a couple bits inside boroughs). A few traffic routes had gaps (see PA 12 north of Easton), and a few children did not quite connect to their parents due to tiny gaps. The following imperfections were present in the 1928 plan:
*1 was not renumbered to avoid conflict with US 1
*989 comes closest to 88, not 1, but is also close to the pre-1927 Lincoln Highway, which may have been PA 1
*402 out of order (perhaps 302 originally returned to 2 via 612)
*507 out of order
*836 and 835 spur from 8 rather than 88, and 956 spurs from 88 rather than 8; most likely 8 and 88 were to have been swapped north of Pittsburgh)
*955 not a spur
*513 out of order
*615 out of order (perhaps it was supposed to be 115 when 115 was 15, before 15 was renumbered due to US 15 - note that US 15 was not in Pennsylvania in the "final" 1926 U.S. Route plan, but had arrived by 1927, replacing US 240)
*215 out of order (could have been planned to hit 115 east of Blakeslee)
*LR 224 Spur, from PA 16 to the Buchanan Birthplace Monument, seems to have had no traffic route number
*931 not a spur, due to the construction of LR 538 (PA 1), which may have been planned to run farther east
*22 was renumbered 29, so its children and spurs seem backwards
*429 missing (wasn't US 309 south of Allentown, which was PA 312)
*527 out of order, and simply a short spur off 227; perhaps it was planned as 912, or perhaps LR 511/PA 227 was realigned during planning (PA 527 was LR 511 Spur, created so LR 511 would continue to serve Fogle Farm as required by the law)
*37 is north-south
*897 out of order (note that Lancaster-Reading was 240, but perhaps in the original plan it was still part of 41, especially because of US 240 in the 1926 U.S. Route plan)
*741 out of order (short connecting link that may not have been numbered in 1928)
*742 out of order (short connecting link that may not have been numbered in 1928)
*647 out of order; it's possible that the original version of the bill did not include both LR 615 (PA 647) and LR 615 Spur (PA 147), and when the bill was amended, PA 647 had to be added; evidence for this comes from LR 322 (future PA 247) having been gone via Tompkinsville until 1927 on what became LR 615 mainline
*447 and 47 are the old and new alignments of LR 174
*884 out of order, 885 touches 51 but not 48; something weird was going on here with LR 288, based on the 1925 definition of LR 393
*549 out of order, and doesn't touch 49; 826 is not a spur, and may have been planned as part of 49, but that wouldn't explain 549's numbering
*550 out of order; could have been part of 50, but then the branches would be out of order
*880 not a spur; Loganton-Big Rock was added to the system in 1927 as part of LR 359, and may have been missing from early planning, in which case LR 503 (Big Rock-Antes Fort) may have been PA 874
*52 has branches in backwards order, and 652 is out of order
*555 out of order, and 355 and 455 are skipped
*157 was probably assigned to LR 750 (now US 62 from Oil City to Tionesta)
*364 has two segments on the 1928 map; Renovo to State Camp (and State Camp to Orviston) had been removed from LR 359 in 1927
*74 has a gap due to a chunk being taken out of LR 305 in 1927
*849 not a spur; may have been a spur in early planning before Newport-Markelsville was added as part of LR 305 in 1927
*the short piece of LR 372 from LR 502 (PA 82) northeast to the end at LR 137 (PA 5) at Brandywine Manor seems to have had no traffic route number
*83 south of Valley Forge was LR 142 Spur A, which does not seem to have been defined legislatively
*86 missing
*491 doesn't touch 91 due to Delaware getting in the way
*832 was LR 86 Spur, which was not legislatively defined
*LR 652 (Pittsburgh-Ben Avon) had no apparent traffic route number until the 1930s as PA 88, but may have been planned as PA 1, since it was part of the pre-1927 Lincoln Highway

Some spur numbers (870, 874, 878, 887, 907, 912, 939, 947, 983, 988) were not used in the final plan, but were presumably assigned somewhere during planning. 831 to 823 were also present in 1928, but did not follow the system; instead they seem to have been either spurs to towns bypassed during planning (almost definitely true for 825-823) or 'oops' routes that had not received numbers:
*831: probably a former alignment of 64 or 264 north of Altoona
*830: oops spur off 950
*829: short link between 35 and 75
*828: short link between 4 and 64 west of Williamsport; this was LR 20 Spur, which was not legislatively defined
*827: spur from 2 in Martins Creek
*826: no idea how this number was chosen; see 549 above
*825: spur from 253 to Smithmill
*824: spur from 34 to Bendersville
*823: spur from 10 to Big Shanty
*822: not sure where this was; may have been LR 235 Spur from PA 239 to Harveyville
*821: added by 1929; loop from 3 through Temple
*820: added by 1929; connected 5 to 241 near Colebrook on apparently-new LR 998

Legislative amendments in 1929 are reflected on the 1930 map. This is also the first time that state aid routes have traffic route numbers. Many of the new numbers do not follow the numbering system perfectly, for example by skipping child numbers.

In 1931, due to the Great Depression, the legislature added a bunch of former township roads to the state highway system. These received five-digit numbers, with the first two being a county code. Subsequently traffic routes were created, extended, or rerouted over some of these (as well as the occasional county road), eliminating the correspondence between the traffic and legislative route systems.

Also in the 1930s, 8xx and 9xx legislative routes were added. These seem to have (almost?) all been county roads that were taken over by the state, and were not legislatively defined. (The one exception is 995, which was the subject of a 1921 law.) I haven't located all the numbers (and some were definitely skipped; it would be too coincidental if there were exactly 200 of these), but there seems to be some clustering. Interestingly, 930 to 967 were all former turnpikes that had been acquired by the counties, mostly in northeast Pennsylvania. 900-902 were apparently assigned in about 1940 on what had been state aid routes.

763-799 and 1000+ (at least to 1147) were later used for freeways and other new arterials where they did not already have numbers.