History
This limited access highway that was planned in the 1950s roughly follows the general route of many older at-grade highways, including U.S. Route 2, U.S. Route 27, U.S. Route 25, and U.S. Route 41, among others. Some of these older U.S. Routes (several of which are still in existence) previously had replaced the eastern route of the old Dixie Highway.
Interstate 75 was planned to end in Tampa, Florida, in the original plan for 41,000 miles of interstate highways. However, beginning in the 1960s, there was a huge growth in the population of southwestern Florida (Sarasota, Ft. Myers, Naples, Cape Coral, etc.), hence the need for new highways, especially a north-south expressway, as well as one connecting Florida's Gulf Coast to South Florida. At first, Florida state legislators proposed a toll in the new highway, but by 1968, it was decided that the Federal Government would pay 90% towards the extension of I-75 to southwestern and southeastern Florida. This included subsuming a privately-owned toll highway from Naples to the Fort Lauderdale area, the Alligator Alley, and furthermore to connect this expressway with Interstate 95 in North Miami -- though due to some local opposition, I-75 presently ends a few miles short of I-95.
On December 21, 1977, I-75 was completed from Tampa to Sault Ste. Marie with its final segment opening between northern Marietta, Georgia, and Cartersville, Georgia. Then the final stretch of Interstate 75 in South Florida was completed in 1986 in Miami-Dade County and Broward County, but the last stretch to receive the signs for I - 75 was the reconstructed (rebuilt and widened) Alligator Alley on November 25, 1992.
Read more about this topic: Interstate 75
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)