In 1967 Kansas asked AASHO to extend US 270

[usends]

At the time US 270 went all the way up to Syracuse KS.  KDoT wanted it extended due north to I-70 at Goodland, but AASHO denied the request.  See article

[sparker]

At the time US 270 went all the way up to Syracuse KS.  KDoT wanted it extended due north to I-70 at Goodland, but AASHO denied the request.  See article

Back before the functional completion of the Interstate system -- when the US Highway network was still the principal road navigational tool around -- it made sense for a diagonal regional server such as US 270 to extend to a major E-W arterial such as US 50 to potentially provide traffic for the 3dus.   It looks like the '67 effort was to extend that concept to the nearest available E-W Interstate.  But the extension would have created a change in basic trajectory for US 270; that's probably the rationale utilized to deny the request (it's difficult to imagine any confusion regarding a conflict with I-270, since the KS 27 alignment was far enough from the I-270 iterations in Denver and St. Louis).  Once I-70 was completed across KS, the rationale for US 270 in the state was increasingly moot, so the truncation to Liberal isn't at all surprising; the path from Liberal to US 50 was convoluted/contrived at best.