New Jersey Route 35 - History

History

The present-day alignment of Route 35 follows parts of many 19th-century turnpikes, including the Keyport and Middletown Turnpike, which was chartered on March 5, 1852, the Middletown Turnpike, chartered in 1866 to run from Middletown Township to Red Bank, the Middletown and Keyport Turnpike, which was chartered on March 15, 1859 to run from Middletown Township to Keyport, the Red Bank and Eatontown Turnpike, chartered on February 9, 1865 along present-day Broad Street, County Route 11, and Route 35, and the Shrewsbury Turnpike, which was chartered in 1857 to run from Red Bank to Eatontown. In 1916, the current alignment of Route 35 was legislated as a part of pre-1927 Route 4 between Point Pleasant and Brielle and from Eatontown to South Amboy. In the 1927 New Jersey state highway renumbering, Route 35 was designated to run from Lakewood to South Amboy, replacing pre-1927 Route 4 from Lakewood to Belmar and from Eatontown to South Amboy with the portion of pre-1927 Route 4 between Belmar and Eatontown becoming Route 4N (now Route 71). At this time, U.S. Route 9 followed the portions of Route 35 that were formerly a part of pre-1927 Route 4. By the 1940s, Route 35 was designated onto its current alignment between Brielle and Belmar with the former alignment becoming a southern extension of Route 4N. U.S. Route 9 was also moved off of Route 35 onto a newly completed alignment of Route 4 between Lakewood and South Amboy. In 1947, Route 35 was extended north to end at Route 25 (now U.S. Route 1) in Iselin, running concurrent with U.S. Route 9.

In the 1953 New Jersey state highway renumbering, the portion of Route 35 between Lakewood and Point Pleasant became Route 88 and Route 35 was designated to head south from Point Pleasant to Seaside Heights on what had been a part of Route 37. This section of Route 35 follows the right-of-way of the former Pennsylvania Railroad Between Seaside Heights and Mantoloking, with the southbound side following the former railroad right-of-way north of Ortley Beach. Also in the 1953 renumbering, the Route 35 designation was removed from the concurrency with U.S. Route 9 between South Amboy and Iselin and reassigned to the former alignment of Route 4 between South Amboy and Route 27 in Rahway. The western bypass of Seaside Heights was built by the 1960s, extending Route 35 south to the border with Seaside Park.

In the late 1950s, plans were made for a freeway along the Route 35 corridor between Seaside Heights and Long Branch to reduce congestion along the current route. This proposed freeway was built as Route 18 between Wall Township and Eatontown from 1965 to 1991 while the southern portion to Seaside Heights was never built. In the early 1970s, a Route 35 freeway was planned to run from Route 18 north to the planned Route 74 freeway in Matawan with an estimated cost of $53 million. This freeway was never built due to the cancellation of the Route 74 freeway in the mid 1970s.

Since the 1953 renumbering, the current alignment of Route 35 has seen many changes and improvements. The section of the route through downtown Point Pleasant Beach was turned into a one-way pair by 1969. Route 35 was extended south to the entrance of Island Beach State Park by the 1980s. Many traffic circles have been removed along Route 35 in recent years, including the Brielle Circle in 2001 and the Eatontown Circle, which were both converted into at-grade intersections with traffic lights, and the Victory Circle, which was replaced with an interchange between 2003 and 2006. Between 2002 and 2005, the Victory Bridge over the Raritan River was reconstructed at a cost of $109 million. Between February 2006 and November 2008, the cloverleaf interchange with U.S. Route 1/9 in Woodbridge Township, which was the first cloverleaf interchange in the United States built in 1929 when this portion of Route 35 was still a part of Route 4, was replaced with a partial cloverleaf interchange, costing $34 million.