Interstate 11 - History

History

As recently as 1997, US 93 was mostly a two-lane road between Phoenix and Las Vegas, and was known for its dangerous curves and hills in the stretch between Wickenburg and I-40. In the late 1990s, ADOT began widening US 93 to four lanes, and in some areas building a completely new roadway. In other places along the route, ADOT simply repaved the old highway and built two new lanes parallel to it. ADOT also began studying the possibility of adding grade separations to US 93 near the Santa Maria River to make the road a full freeway.

At the same time Arizona and Nevada began looking at US 93's crossing of Hoover Dam, a major bottleneck for regional commerce, with hairpin turns, multiple crosswalks for pedestrians and steep grades. Plans for a bridge to bypass the dam became even more urgent when the road was closed to trucks after September 11, 2001, forcing commercial traffic to detour through Bullhead City, Arizona, and Laughlin, Nevada.

With the completion of the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge in October 2010, the vast majority of the roadway is now a four-lane divided highway. Still, with Phoenix and Las Vegas being the two largest neighboring cities in America not connected by Interstate Highway, leaders in both cities are lobbying to include I-11 in the next Transportation Equity Act reauthorization.