A route following a chain of streets, roads, and highways
from
Park City,
Utah, just east of
Salt Lake City,
to
Atlantic City,
New Jersey, passing through some
of the
United States's largest cities along the way.
In the Eastern US, US 40 follows the course of the first federally-funded
highway, the National Road, which stretched from Baltimore
to Vandalia, Illinois. During the last of the 18th
century, and the 19th century, the country's center of population followed
the road westward.
US 40 was constructed during the 1920s and 1930s, and was, for a time,
one of the principal routes used for crossing the United States.
That is, until air travel and the Interstate Highway System supplanted
it. US 40 is now chopped up by interstates, principally I-70, which
often carries US 40 as an additional designator. In other places,
US 40 parallels the interstate along surface roads with abandoned roadside
attractions and decaying strip shopping centers, as well as tony suburbs
and Wal-Marts, as well as the small-town downtowns they strangle.
Wallace
Oakley (I-70 again)
Hays
Salina
Abilene
Junction City
Topeka, free of I-70 for awhile
Lawrence (6th street, then Massachussetts Avenue)
Tonganoxie
Kansas City, Kansas (State Avenue)
Indiana
Northern panhandle, 9 miles total.
-
Wheeling (Market Street, then several roads I can't identify)
-
Keysers Ridge, where US 40 follows the National Freeway,
I-68, And Alternate 40 parallels it on the National Pike
-
Frostburg
-
Cumberland
-
Hancock, where I-68 gives way to I-70, and US 40 follows
the National Pike on its own
-
Hagerstown
-
Frederick (I-70, now Baltimore National Pike)
-
Mount Airy
-
Ellicott City
-
Catonsville
-
Baltimore (BNP, then Edmondson Avenue, then Franklin
Street/Mulberry Street, then Orleans Street, then Pulaski Highway)
-
Aberdeen
-
Havre de Grace
-
Perryville
-
Elkton
14 miles total