Interstate 35 in Oklahoma

Interstate 35 Main route of the Interstate Highway System
Maintained by ODOT
Length:	235.96 mi[1] (379.74 km)
South end:	I-35 at the Texas State Line
Major junctions:	I-240 in Oklahoma City I-235 in Oklahoma City I-40 in Oklahoma City I-44 in Oklahoma City US-412 (Cimarron Turnpike) at I-35 (Eastbound toward Tulsa) US-412 / US-64 at I-35 (Westbound toward Enid)
North end:	I-35 / KTA at the Kansas State Line
Oklahoma State Highways < SH-34 SH-35 >

Oklahoma is the second state that Interstate 35 (I-35) passes through from south to north. In Oklahoma, I-35 runs from the Red River at the Texas border to the Kansas line near Braman, for a length of 236 miles^[1] (372 km). I-35 has one spur route in the state, Interstate 235 in the inner city of Oklahoma City.

Route description

Interstate 35 enters Oklahoma with U.S. Highway 77 on a bridge over the Red River in Love County, south of Thackerville. US-77 splits off at Exit 1, but parallels the interstate for its entire length in Oklahoma. I-35 maintains a near-due north-south course through Love and Carter Cos. I-35 provides four exits to Ardmore. After leaving Ardmore, it has a brief concurrency with State Highway 53 and enters Murray County and the Arbuckle Mountains. I-35 then passes through Garvin County and the county seat of Pauls Valley. North of exit 79, I-35 enters McClain County. There, it passes through Purcell and Goldsby.

State Highway 9 joins the interstate crossing over the South Canadian River into Cleveland County, after which it splits off again. It then serves as a major urban interstate in Norman and Moore. Between Norman and Moore, US-77 joins the interstate again. It then enters Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County near milepost 120. Near downtown, I-35 splits off the mainline (which becomes Interstate 235/US-77) and runs concurrent with Interstate 40 for a mile before splitting off to the north again. Interstate 44 then joins I-35 between mileposts 133 and 137. In Edmond US-77 joins the interstate yet again.

Interstate 35 in Goldsby, Oklahoma at milemarker 102.

At milepost 146, I-35 enters Logan County. It serves Guthrie at Exit 153, where US-77 splits off, and at Exit 157. The interstate then crosses the Cimarron River into Payne County and enters Noble County shortly thereafter. It provides two exits to Perry and serves as the western terminus of the Cimarron Turnpike. After providing access to Tonkawa and Blackwell in Kay County, it crosses into Kansas, becoming the Kansas Turnpike.

History

Some sections of I-35 in Oklahoma City were already built in 1953, before the Interstate system was created.^[2] Following the passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1956 that created the Interstate Highway System, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation approved the location of the future interstate north of Oklahoma City to the Kansas state line on a route previously surveyed by the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority for a proposed toll road. As a free road, the first five miles (8 km) of that section of I-35 were opened to traffic in 1958 from US-177 near Braman north to the Kansas border where it continued as the Kansas Turnpike. This was followed by completion of the entire route from Oklahoma City northward to Braman by 1963 in several phases including Edmond to Guthrie in 1960, Guthrie to Perry in 1961, Perry to Blackwell in 1962 and Blackwell to Braman in early 1963.

To the south of Oklahoma City, I-35 was completed through Norman, Oklahoma south to Purcell, Oklahoma in June 1959. In Moore, it opened in two parts: the northern half, connecting Moore to Oklahoma City, opened in January 1960. The southern half, linking it to Norman, was opened to traffic in June 1967.^[3] The Moore–Norman segment was originally a four-lane section of US-77 built in 1951 that did not meet full Interstate Highway standards and included several at-grade intersections within the City of Moore including some with traffic signals and upgraded accordingly to include grade separations to bring up to full Interstate Highway standards and frontage roads to serve local traffic needs. Also not up to full Interstate Highway standards prior to 1967 was a section in the vicinity of Lindsey Street in the southern portion of Norman where another at-grade intersection still existed which dated back to the original highway's construction in the early 1950s—this was also brought up to full Interstate Highway standards in 1967 with the construction of interchanges on I-35 at Lindsey and a short distance to the south for the future SH-9 bypass that would be built around the south side of Norman in the early 1970s.

Further south, I-35 was completed from Marietta south to the Red River bridge in 1963, at which point a nearly 90-mile (140 km) gap of uncompleted interstate would exist between Purcell and Marietta until the late 1960s with traffic continuing to be routed over paralleling US-77. This was in large part due to efforts of the towns of Wynnewood, Paoli, and Wayne, fighting to keep I-35 as close as possible to US-77. This was successful due to a threat from Governor Henry Bellmon to build a toll road rather than I-35, and legislation preventing state funds for the interstate from being spent if it were more than 1-mile (1.6 km) from the U.S. route.^[4]

The uncompleted gap of I-35 in Southern Oklahoma was narrowed in 1967 and 1968 when two sections were completed from US-70/SH-199 in Ardmore south to SH-32 in Marietta. In 1969, the section of interstate bypassing Ardmore was completed north from US-70 two miles (3 km) to SH-142 and the following year, 1970, brought the completion of I-35 from SH-7 near Davis south to Ardmore, at long last bypassing the winding section of US-77 through the Arbuckle Mountains. A few months later in January, 1971, I-35 was finally completed across the state of Oklahoma, when the remaining portions of the interstate from Purcell to SH-7 near Davis were opened to traffic. ^[2]

Future

ODOT has announced plans to widen 2 miles (3.2 km) of Interstate 35 through Norman, from the McCall Bridge over the Canadian River to the Main Street interchange (Exit 109). Controversy surrounding the project arose when early drafts eliminated the SH-74A/Lindsey Street interchange (Exit 108B), due to its proximity to the SH-9 interchange (Exit 108A). A public meeting held in Norman attracted 300 attendees, many bearing "Don't Close Lindsey" signs. Attendees cited the impact on local businesses and those attending University of Oklahoma football games as grounds for opposing the closure of the interchange. A former OU economics professor estimated the interchange's closure would cost Norman $100 million over the course of fifteen years.^[5]

At the meeting, four proposals were displayed, only one of which displayed no access from Lindsey Street. A second proposal would preserve access to Lindsey Street but require the seizure of a newly-built Chevrolet dealership near the interchange. The third proposal would instead send the ramps around the dealership, and the fourth, the highest-cost alternate, would use bridges to prevent Lindsey Street and SH-9 traffic from conflicting. ODOT said their design standards did not require consideration of OU football traffic, because they only considered the 30th highest traffic percentile. One ODOT engineer was quoted as saying, "Otherwise, we'd have to 10-lane everything in Norman."^[5]

Naming

• Through the Arbuckle Mountains, I-35 is designated as the Honey Creek Pass.
• The bridge over the South Canadian River is the S.K. McCall Memorial Bridge.
• In Moore, I-35 is the Helen Cole Memorial Highway.
• In Edmond, I-35 is the Shannon Miller Parkway.

Exit list

County	Location	Mile	#	Destinations	Notes
I-35/US-77 enter Texas
Love			1	US-77 north	North end of US-77 overlap
			5	SH-153 – Thackerville
			15	State Highway 32 – Marietta, Ryan
			21	Oswalt Rd.
Carter			24	SH-77S – Lake Murray State Park
	Ardmore		29	US-70 east – Madill, Ardmore	South end of US-70 overlap
			31A	State Highway 199 east – Ardmore
			31B	US-70 west – Waurika, Lone Grove	North end of US-70 overlap
			32	12th St.
			33	State Highway 142 – Ardmore
			40	State Highway 53 east – Springer, Gene Autry	South end of SH-53 overlap
			42	State Highway 53 west – Comanche	North end of SH-53 overlap
Murray			47	US-77 – Turner Falls Area
			51	US-77 – Turner Falls Area
			55	SH-7 – Davis, Duncan, Sulphur
Garvin			60	Ruppe Rd.
	Wynnewood		64	State Highway 17A east – Wynnewood
			66	State Highway 29 – Wynnewood, Elmore City
	Pauls Valley		70	Airport Rd.
			72	State Highway 19 – Pauls Valley, Maysville	Lindsay
			74	Kimberlin Rd.
			79	State Highway 145 – Paoli
McClain			86	State Highway 59 – Wayne, Payne
	Purcell		91	SH-74 – Purcell, Lexington	TO State Highway 39
			95	Purcell	Southbound signed as "To US-77, Purcell/Lexington"
			98	Johnson Rd.
	Goldsby		101	Ladd Rd.
			104	SH-74 south – Goldsby, Washington
			106	SH-9 west – Chickasha	South end of SH-9 overlap
Cleveland	Norman		108A	SH-9 east – Tecumseh	North end of SH-9 overlap
			108B	Lindsey St.
			109	Main St.
			110	Robinson St.	Two exits southbound; Robinson St. westbound (110B) and Robinson St (110A)
			112	Tecumseh Rd.
			113	US-77 south – Norman	Southbound only; US-77 joins northbound and splits southbound
			114	Indian Hill Rd.
	Moore		116	S. 19th St.
			117	SH-37 (S. 4th St.) Main St., N. 5th St.	Southbound SH-37 (S. 4th St.) only
			118	N. 12th St.	Southbound Main St., N. 5th St. included
			119A	Shields Blvd.	Northbound only; reconstructed in 2006
			119B	N. 27th St.
	Oklahoma City		120	S.E. 89th St.
Oklahoma			121	I-240 / US-62 west / SH-3 – Lawton, Fort Smith	South end of US-62 overlap
			122A	S.E. 66th St.
			122B	S.E. 59th St.
			123A	S.E. 51st St.
			123B	S.E. 44th St.
			124A	Grand Blvd.
			124B	S.E. 29th St., S.E. 25th St.
			125D	S.E. 15th St.
			126	I-235 north – Edmond, Downtown/ I-40 west – Amarillo	South end of I-40/US-270 overlap; north end of US-77 overlap
			127	Eastern Ave., M.L. King Ave.
			128	I-40 east – Ft. Smith	North end of I-40/US-270 overlap
			129	N.E. 10th St.
			130	US-62 east (N.E. 23rd St.)	North end of US-62 overlap
			131	N.E. 36th St.
			132A	N.E. 50th St.
			132B	N.E. 63rd St.
			133	I-44/State Highway 66 west – Lawton/Amarillo	South end of I-44/SH-66 overlap
			134	Wilshire Blvd.
			135	Britton Rd.
			136	Hefner Rd.
			137	N.E. 122nd St.
			138A	I-44 east – Tulsa	North end of I-44 overlap
			138B	Kilpatrick Turnpike
			138C	Sooner Rd.	Southbound only
	Edmond		138D	Memorial Rd.
			139	33rd St.
			140	15th St.
			141	US-77 south/State Highway 66 south (2nd St.)	North end of SH-66 overlap; south end of US-77 overlap
			142	Danforth Rd.
			143	Covell Rd.
			146	Waterloo Rd.
Logan			151	Seward Rd.
	Guthrie		153	US-77 north – Guthrie	Cleo Bradshaw Interchange; US-77 splits northbound and joins southbound
			157	SH-33 – Guthrie, Perkins, Cushing
Payne			170	Mulhall Rd.
			174	SH-51 – Stillwater, Hennessey
Noble			180	Orlando Rd.
	Perry		185	US-77 – Perry, Covington
			186	US-64 east (Fir St.) – Perry	South end of US-64 overlap
			193	Airport Rd.	Northbound only
			194A	US-412 east (Cimarron Turnpike) – Tulsa
			194B	US-64 west / US-412 west – Enid	North end of US-64 overlap
			203	SH-15 – Billings, Marland
Kay			211	Fountain Rd.
			214	US-60 – Tonkawa, Ponca City
			218	Hubbard Rd.
			222	SH-11 – Blackwell, Medford
			230	Braman Rd.
			231	US-177 – Braman	Braman not signed northbound
I-35 enters Kansas, Kansas Turnpike begins

References

Interstate 35
Previous state: Texas	Oklahoma	Next state: Kansas