Illinois Roads - IL 15

IL 15 (former US 460)



An aborted freeway heads southeast from I-55/I-64 at Exit 1. The stub, leading into Tudor Ave. EB and Piggott Ave. WB, was intended as a US 460 freeway toward Belleville. Since then, US 460 has been truncated all the way out of Illinois, leaving IL 15 in its path, so this would now be IL 15 if it had been completed.


Looking north from the southern stub end at the I-55/I-64 interchange, with St. Louis behind. I-70 is shown on the signs but was since removed for a new crossing to the north. Not shown, but also present: US 40, IL 3.


The original route of US 460 looks much like IL 15 does now - into town on Old Missouri Ave., jogging west on 9th and 10th Streets to Broadway, but instead of turning to I-55/I-64 (which didn't exist), it continued over the Eads Bridge to end in St. Louis. When the MLK Bridge was built just to the north, the old maps get fuzzy as to what happened. It's clear that other US highways took the bridge, including US 40, US 50, and US 66. If US 460 joined them for a time in the 1960s, that would jibe with the approximate age of the "No U-Turn" sign on Old Missouri Ave. WB at Collinsville Ave., itself an old 66 alignment. (The bank is on the NE corner.) With the construction of Exit 1 ramps for the stub, ramps were also built down to Main and 4th Streets, and IL 15 was brought back on the original US 460 alignment (if it ever left) to meet the freeway there. I'm a believer that US 460 did once pass here.


At I-57 Exit 95 west of Mt. Vernon in 1978, courtesy Michael Summa.

Onto I-55
Onto I-64
To I-70
Onto I-57
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