Showing posts with label unbult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unbult. Show all posts

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Proposed expressways of Camden

The map below is from the 1963 Ouachita County AHTD map. It shows a proposed system of expressways in the city of Camden:

Click for larger image(41 KB)

Some of these roads were built. The eastern portion of the US 79 expressway was built on a slightly different alignment and is a 4 lane expressway, complete with an awkward interchange with US 79B/US 278 (AR 4 was renumbered US 278 in the late 1990s) and more conventional interchanges at AR 7 and US 79 south but at-grades elsewhere. The AR 4/US 278 expressway was also built in a slightly different location than shown on the map. It was built with 2 lanes, but now about half of it has been upgraded to 4 lanes. The T intersection at US 278B/old US 278 is unfortunate, as WB traffic must stop and make a left hand turn to continue on the highway. US 278 has many stop signs in Arkansas.

The AR 7 expressway as shown on this map was never built. An AR 7 expressway was built on mostly new location from Camden to El Dorado, but it ties back into the old route just north of Tate. Existing AR 7 was upgraded to a surface arterial "expressway" north of this point to the US 79 expressway. The interesting part of this map is that it shows the relocated AR 7 extending all the way to downtown Camden. NOTE: the map legend labels the double-dotted line as "projected road" so any or all of these roads could possibly have been proposed as 2 lane surface roads.

Special thanks to Geostor for the historic map images.