Interstate 80
I-80 is the Interstate Highway that most closely approximates the route of the historic Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States. The highway roughly traces other historically significant travel routes in the Western United States: the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska, the California Trail across most of Nevada and California, the first transcontinental airmail route, and except in the Great Salt Lake area, the entire route of the First Transcontinental Railroad. From near Chicago east to near Youngstown, Ohio, I-80 is a toll road, containing the majority of both the Indiana Toll Road and the Ohio Turnpike. I-80 runs concurrently with I-90 from near Portage, Indiana, to Elyria, Ohio. In Pennsylvania, I-80 is known as the Keystone Shortway, a non-tolled freeway that crosses rural north-central portions of the state on the way to New Jersey and New York City.
U.S. Route 80 in Alabama
Elsewhere in the United States, the Interstate had brought the days of US 80 being a transcontinental highway to an end. California had formally decommissioned its segment of the highway between 1964 and 1969, followed by Arizona between 1977 and 1989 and New Mexico from 1989 to 1991. Though Texas decommissioned the majority of its section by 1991, the section from Dallas to Savannah remained and the routing has remained unaltered since. Today, I-20, I-10 and I-8 have taken the place of US 80's western segment. Though US 80 still exists between Dallas and Savannah, it has long since been replaced as a main highway through all of Mississippi and Louisiana by I-20 and between Macon and Savannah in Georgia by I-16 Alabama is a unique case, as US 80 still remains the main east west highway through Alabama's Black Belt, which is almost the entire highway within the state. Since 1987, the route between Cuba and Demopolis has been upgraded into a four lane highway, and US 80 was moved onto I-85 between Eastern Boulvard in Montgomery and I-85 Exit 16 east of Mount Meigs. US 80 has also been rerouted around Selma onto SR 41 and SR 14, while SR 8 continues to be routed on the older alignment through town. Today, the old Selma route, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is signed as US 80 Business.