New Jersey Route 154 - History

History

The alignment of Route 154 was originally a stretch of State Highway Route 41 through Cherry Hill and Ellisburg assigned in the 1927 renumbering of state highways. The route went from its current alignment along former State Highway Route 25 to current Route 154 instead of via the Kings Highway. The route remained intact until plans for a bypass around Haddonfield arose in 1929. By the second state highway renumbering in 1953, the bypass around Haddonfield had only been partially built, so instead, the New Jersey State Highway Department realigned Route 41 onto the Kings Highway, leaving the former route unnumbered. The route remained unnumbered until the 1960s, when it was given the designation of Route 154.

In 1938, the State Highway Department tore down the Ellisburg General Store, a market located at the intersection of then-Route 41 and Route 40 (now Route 70) to construct a new traffic circle at the junction. This circle, known as the Ellisburg Circle, was removed in 1992, while plans arose in the late 1980s to remove the congested circle, hosting the junctions of Route 154, 41 and 70. The impetus to remove the structure and replace it with a four-way intersection was produced in 1987, with a cost of $8 million (1987 USD) to rebuild.