Gone but not forgotten: The history of US 80

We recently stumbled upon this photo from 1974 of US 80 in Douglas.

Originally called the “Mother of Arizona Highways” because of its economic impacts to cities and towns it passed through, US 80 was completely paved or surfaced with oil by the spring of 1939.

Before long, traffic on US 80 became as crowded as US 66, its famous northern highway cousin.

The nearly 500-mile route in the Grand Canyon State was part of the coast-to-coast Bankhead Highway. It wound through southeastern Arizona to Tucson, north and west into Phoenix, over and down to Gila Bend and southwest to Yuma.

From there, the highway replaced a plank road across the sand dunes between Yuma and California's Imperial Valley, offering a route to Southern California.

So what happened to this once important road across Arizona and the southern United States? 

The answer: interstates.

As interstates were laid out, US 80 was mostly taken away by Interstate 8 and Interstate 10, which created a better alignment or a quicker bypass for travelers going from one destination to another.

The demise of US 80 in Arizona started in 1964 when California began a massive renumbering of its highways. One part of that was retiring US highways in favor of the interstates. By the end of the decade US 80’s western terminus was Yuma.

In 1977, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials approved Arizona's request to remove the US 80 designation from all but the section between the New Mexico state line and Benson. Later,  Arizona and New Mexico would petition in 1989 to remove the US 80 designation between Benson and Anthony, New Mexico. 

The remaining stretch in Arizona was designated as State Route 80.

Though it's been more than 30 years since US 80 has been an actual highway in Arizona, its influence remains. 

The US 80 route that once serpentined across the bottom half of the state is more or less the same alignment as portions of I-10, I-8, State Route 77, State Route 79, US 60 and State Route 85. More than that, you can still drive portions of "Old US 80" in southwestern Arizona near Yuma and again north of Gila Bend.