Airline Highway is a divided highway in the U.S. state of Louisiana, built in stages between 1925 and 1953 to bypass the older Jefferson Highway. It carries U.S. Highway 61 from New Orleans northwest to Baton Rouge, and U.S. Highway 190 from Baton Rouge west over the Mississippi River on the Huey P. Long Bridge. US 190 continues west towards Opelousas on an extension built at roughly the same time.
The highway was named because it runs relatively straight on a new alignment, rather than alongside the winding Mississippi River. The name became quite fitting, as both Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport are along the highway. Airline Highway also runs close to the site of the old Baton Rouge airfield (near the intersection of Airline and Florida Blvd., now a park and government office complex), which brings it within blocks of the similarly named Airport Ave and Airway Drive.
Read more about Airline Highway: History, Baton Rouge Bypass, Junction List
Famous quotes containing the words airline and/or highway:
“My job as a reservationist was very routine, computerized ... I had no free will. I was just part of that stupid computer.”
—Beryl Simpson, U.S. employment counselor; former airline reservationist. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“The highway presents an interesting study of American roadside advertising. There are signs that turn like windmills; startling signs that resemble crashed airplanes; signs with glass lettering which blaze forth at night when automobile headlight beams strike them; flashing neon signs; signs painted with professional touch; signs crudely lettered and misspelled.... They extol the virtues of ice creams, shoe creams, cold creams;...”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)