Highway 420

[bugo]

In honor of the most infamous holiday.  Where are there highway 420s?  Are road markers often missing due to theft?  There are no highway 420s in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, or Oklahoma.

[Scott5114]

NY 420's shields are put up on stilts to prevent theft.

[roadfro]

Nevada doesn't have a State Route 420 either. With Nevada's clustered numbering system, the current route numbers skip from SR 401 to SR 425.

[mightyace]

Tennessee has a short secondary route 420 which runs for a few miles near Gibson, TN.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=gibson+county+tn&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.421237,49.921875&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Gibson+County,+Tennessee&ll=35.887659,-88.927631&spn=0.097491,0.097504&z=13&layer=c&cbll=35.887577,-88.927588&panoid=AWb5mgFdvxXpJx7SeNHiPQ&cbp=12,12.36,,0,15.62

[dfilpus]

Ohio 420 is a the extension of I 280 past the Ohio Turnpike to US 20/23. It even has reassurance shields.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=41.504689,-83.463607&spn=0,0.00927&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.504553,-83.463606&panoid=ds89UVqy3vrc86URoqSd5Q&cbp=12,199.13,,0,5

[74/171FAN]

VA 420 is Seminary Rd in Alexandria and is never even posted.

[Duke87]

CT 420 does not currently exist, but where it was is on UCONN's main campus (heh). It's now part of CT 430. Of course, neither route is or was signed, as CT routes numbered 400+ are the "secret routes".

[Ian]

PA 420, less than a mile away from me (and one of the most common sign thefts in the area)...

[bulldog1979]

Michigan doesn't have an M-420... there are no highways in Michigan in the 400s except Interstates.

[xonhulu]

Oregon has a highway 420 (Midland Hwy, down by Klamath Falls), but it's currently unsigned and was one of the few Oregon highways to not get a route number assigned in 2002.

[Ian]

Ontario has a Highway 420 running from downtown Niagara Falls to the QEW.

[agentsteel53]

Nevada doesn't have a State Route 420 either. With Nevada's clustered numbering system, the current route numbers skip from SR 401 to SR 425.

how does that work?  I had always thought that the first digit was of some importance, and then they were assigned relatively contiguously.  Is 401 used because they ran out of 3xx numbers?

[thenetwork]

In honor of the most infamous holiday.  Where are there highway 420s?  Are road markers often missing due to theft?  There are no highway 420s in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, or Oklahoma.

Not sure of any Route 420's in Colorado offhand, but on I-70 in Western Colorado between Mile Markers 68 & 70, they purposely labeled the in-between marker as "Mile 68.99" to avoid sign thefts.

[xonhulu]

Not sure of any Route 420's in Colorado offhand, but on I-70 in Western Colorado between Mile Markers 68 & 70, they purposely labeled the in-between marker as "Mile 68.99" to avoid sign thefts.

The same reason Oregon's Belt Line Highway got designated OR 569 a couple years ago; the originally planned number (its secret highway number) was about 500 less.

[joseph1723]

Ontario has a Highway 420 running from downtown Niagara Falls to the QEW.

Here's a picture of the ON 420 marker, it's isn't mounted really high though...

(picture from flickr by dougtone)

Not sure of any Route 420's in Colorado offhand, but on I-70 in Western Colorado between Mile Markers 68 & 70, they purposely labeled the in-between marker as "Mile 68.99" to avoid sign thefts.

That was also the reason why a secondary highway in Ontario was later renumbered to ON 658. The originally posted number was eight more.

[Bryant5493]

There was to be an I-420 in Metro Atlanta, but that got scraped. What was left from that was S.R. 166/Lanford Parkway, formerly Lakewood Freeway.


Be well,

Bryant

[agentsteel53]

do you have any photos of I-420 shields?  I'm always looking for examples of the extinct routes...

[agentsteel53]

btw, here is a CA 420 green spade.



it's a 12x12 shield whose photo I yanked from an eBay auction.  Note the absence of mounting holes - other than that and the half-scale sizing, it looks to be completely up to spec.

[agentsteel53]

and another ... a US 420 shield



between the CA-420 and about 9 examples of US-420, that is all we have on the shield gallery with that number.  US-420 was decommissioned in 1933, and was a single-state route.

[Bryant5493]

do you have any photos of I-420 shields?  I'm always looking for examples of the extinct routes...

No, I've no photos of any I-420 shileds, as I don't think it ever made it past the planning stage, really. The only portion built was 166 between I-285 in Ben Hill (southwest Atlanta) and just east I-75/85 near Aaron's Amphitheatre at Lakewood.


Be well,

Bryant

[agentsteel53]

gotcha.  There were a few shields posted for routes that were never built, but I believe that only extends for numbers that existed elsewhere with only particular segments unbuilt.

I am thinking of a Massachusetts I-95 shield on the Tobin Bridge, despite the fact that I-95 was never built through there... the number was hastily slapped onto a ring road around Boston (the Tobin bridge is just north of downtown Boston), and the position of the 95 shield was technically correct, as you would get to I-95 ... eventually ...



Doug Kerr photo that's on Steve Alpert's site.  That blob on the left sign is, indeed, an I-95 shield.  I saw it all the time growing up*; probably was around as late as 2000 or so.  If I recall correctly, it was an 18x18 shield with the extra-large MASSACHUSETTS state name, i.e. 1956 spec, that Mass used into the mid-60s.

I distinctly recall the I-95 as being one of the few shields with the Mass state name; in the late 80s NH and RI were plentiful but Mass was already hard to find.  There was an I-86 survivor at exit 2 of I-84 in Sturbridge with state name, and occasional other ones, like some 495s at the Lowell Connector, but I distinctly remember looking forward to family trips out of state because it seemed every other state had their name on the shields!

[roadfro]

Nevada doesn't have a State Route 420 either. With Nevada's clustered numbering system, the current route numbers skip from SR 401 to SR 425.

how does that work?  I had always thought that the first digit was of some importance, and then they were assigned relatively contiguously.  Is 401 used because they ran out of 3xx numbers?

The first digit isn't of major importance, other than you can ascertain what classification the route previously belonged to.  See this post in the old "State Numbering" thread for a more thorough explanation of the origins of Nevada's current state route numbers.

What I didn't mention in that thread is that while route numbers were assigned somewhat numerically in the county/city clusters, NDOT generally left a buffer of numbers unused (generally about 10) in case new routes needed to be added to the system later on. Somehow, conveniently, the clustering tends to avoid placing numbers into separate groups of hundreds--Pershing County is the only exception in the FAS system (routes 396 through 401 [and possibly other routes on either side of that range]). The next county alphabetically is Storey, which would have FAS numbers in the 41x range if the county's few FAS routes hadn't been assigned numbers corresponding to Lyon County (the numbering buffer appears to have left room for possible future FAS routes in Storey County anyway). Washoe County is next alphabetically, and it's FAS numbers started around 425.


Note: Info in this and the linked post is all information I gleaned fairly quickly when I happened to find a plethora of NDOT documents in the government documents collection of UNR main library one night shortly before closing. Particularly, this comes from what I can remember from a brief perusal of the 1978 route log (the earliest they had on the shelf). Unfortunately, government documents typically cannot be checked out, and I haven't had time to go back and study this stuff in depth. It's on my to-do list, but other priorities currently limit my time available for in-depth roadgeek-related research.

[agentsteel53]

good info!

I have heard that the "great renumbering" took place any time between 1976 and 1982, which I take to mean that it was first put on paper in 1976 and the field implementation was complete by 1982.  Is this correct?

there are still some 34 shields left out in the sticks in Washoe county.



[one can easily guess exactly where that junction sign is.  Still there as of 2009.]



is it true that the dirt roads (which 34 turns into just a few hundred feet past this photo) were not renumbered like the paved ones were, and therefore kept their old numbers, but were not to be signed, as they were officially being dropped from the system?

there is also this 8A survivor.  Yep, another dirt road - these three photos are the only three survivors of the old numbering that I am aware of.  (NV-28 and NV-88 as routes that share a California route number notwithstanding.)

[roadfro]

good info!

I have heard that the "great renumbering" took place any time between 1976 and 1982, which I take to mean that it was first put on paper in 1976 and the field implementation was complete by 1982.  Is this correct?

is it true that the dirt roads (which 34 turns into just a few hundred feet past this photo) were not renumbered like the paved ones were, and therefore kept their old numbers, but were not to be signed, as they were officially being dropped from the system?

Some older editions of Nevada's route logs (up to at least 2001) show "authorization dates" for all the routes. Most routes list 7/1/76 as an authorization date, with no earlier dates listed. This indicates to me that the renumbering was authorized on paper on July 1, 1976.

At the time, NDOT was publishing new state maps every two years. The 1976-77 version had no mention of the new numbers, but the 1978-79 and 1980-81 versions showed new numbers with the old for highways that were renumbered (and continued to show old numbers on non-paved roads). NDOT made a single-year edition of the map in 1982, which shows only the new numbers.  This leads me to believe that the resigning was completed some time in 1982.


From the passing of Nevada's state highway law in 1917 up until the renumbering in the mid 1970s, Nevada's state routes were defined in state law. Once the renumbering came along, virtually all references to specific routes were removed from the Nevada Revised Statutes. This, in essence, removed all pre-1976 numbers from the system (except 28, 88 and 140). (A "Route 94" remains the sole route number prescribed in the NRS, which follows a route from near Pahrump through to SR 159 in the Red Rock area west of Las Vegas. This appears to have been inexplicably added in 1989, and I've never seen any trace of it on maps or in the field.)

I've been told that many dirt roads that had been assigned a route number under state law were actually county roads not maintained by the state. Hence, virtually all state route numbers were removed during the renumbering. This doesn't necessarily jive with the fact that the law was written in a way that the department of highways was supposed to maintain the routes as prescribed in the law. However, it does seem consistent with the fact that most of the paved rural routes got a new three-digit number in the renumbering process, with the majority still on the state highway system today.  I haven't been able to research the pre-1976 state highway laws in depth to get a clearer answer on this...I seem to remember there being some pre-1976 road catalog information available at the UNR library, but it wasn't particularly clear and I didn't have time to research in depth.

Old SR 34 is currently maintained by Washoe County as a county route. Old SR 447 north of Gerlach is also maintained as CR 447--Typical county pentagon shields with begin/end banners are at the state highway terminus in Gerlach (probably erected by NDOT, as they appear directly below the SR 447 end/begin shields), but state shield signage persists along the county maintained portion north of Gerlach (as evidenced in the photos above). Not sure about old SR 8A though.

[haljackey]

lol from the Highway 420 (Ontario) article on Wikipedia:

Highway 420 in cannabis culture

Due to its association with the number 420 in cannabis culture, Highway 420 is also the location for the annual Cannabis Conference and Protest, usually taking place sometime around April 20 (i.e. 4/20). The event includes guest speakers, discussion panels, raffles, prizes and, most obviously, a cannabis march. The march begins near the Niagara Falls, continues up the famous Clifton Hill and ends, inevitably, at Highway 420.

The highway has also, at times, fallen victim to street sign theft because of its highway number.

Toronto post rock band Do Make Say Think reference the highway in their song "Highway 420" from their album Do Make Say Think.