The Eureka Freeway that never was

[Voyager]

Found this interesting post on Facebook mentioned recently, and its amazing how much detail they went into planning this freeway that never happened. It's an old post (2014), and Facebook doesn't let you copy links anymore apparently? So here's a page screenshot (If you search "model" on Caltrans District 1 you can find it pretty easily.

[Quillz]

Eureka is small enough that it was probably felt a bypass of sorts would be too damaging to business. This was one of the issues with the recently built Willits bypass. Although the present "safety zone" between Eureka and Arcata is getting upgraded to a full freeway.

[Voyager]

Eureka is small enough that it was probably felt a bypass of sorts would be too damaging to business. This was one of the issues with the recently built Willits bypass. Although the present "safety zone" between Eureka and Arcata is getting upgraded to a full freeway.

It looks like this wouldn't have been a bypass at all, it was going to be built right through downtown.

[Max Rockatansky]

The links on Facebook expire after a couple hours.  I believe the freeway alignment adoption was covered in a 1960s era CHPW.

[The Ghostbuster]

I can understand why a freeway through the city of Eureka would have been a no-go, but surely they could have tried to find a way to construct a bypass around Eureka. I guess the people are content with keeping US 101 routed through town, for better or for worse.

[Alps]

I can say this is needed for traffic in Eureka - either a bypass or a downtown freeway like this. A shame it didn't materialize.

[cl94]

Eureka is fun because, outside of plowing through downtown, any bypass would miss most businesses by several miles thanks to how the city is laid out. Because of this, the city has generally been opposed to any bypass proposals. Sure, there's a decent amount of expressway/freeway on each side, but small businesses love getting a bunch of long-distance traffic past their buildings.

FWIW, I don't remember my visits to Eureka being particularly painful when passing through on 101.

[cahwyguy]

Working on my highway pages and coming across this. I note on my pages:

In Eureka CA, there are some survey markers on Ninth Street between A and L streets. These are circular metal discs anchored into the south sidewalk bearing the words "CALIFORNIA DIVISION OF HIGHWAYS," "HUM-101" and the date 1971. The discs are centerline markers of what would have been the realignment of US 101, taking off from what is now Bayshore Mall, staying south of Fourth and Fifth streets, and rejoining the present-day highway west of the Eureka Slough bridge. Had the plan gone ahead, there would have been a high-speed bypass through Eureka in the same way there is a bypass of downtown Arcata.

The source is https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/survey-markers-and-olympic-medals-15193393