Nebraska State Highway System
The Nebraska State Highway System consists of all the state highways in Nebraska maintained by the Nebraska Department of Roads. This includes federally designated Interstates and US Highways as well as state highways, links and spurs. The system comprises 9,942 miles (16,000 km) of state highways in all 93 counties. Highways within the system range in scale and quality from 10-lane urban freeways, such as I-80 around Omaha, to standard two-lane rural undivided highways as well as 39 miles (63 km) of state highways that remain unpaved such as N-67 north of Dunbar. Surrounding landscapes along the highway system range from the urban areas in Omaha and Lincoln to scenic journeys through uninhabited grasslands in the Nebraska Sandhills.
| State Highway System | |
|---|---|
A map of state highways in the state of Nebraska Interstates US Highways State Spurs Links | |
| System information | |
| Maintained by NDOT | |
| Length | 9,942 mi (16,000 km) |
| Formed | 1895 as State Board of Irrigation 1933 as Department of Roads |
| Highway names | |
| Interstates | Interstate X (I-X) |
| US Highways | US Highway X (US-X) |
| State | Highway X (N-X) |
| Link: | Link L-XY (L-XY) |
| Spur: | Spur S-XY (S-XY) |
| Recreation Road: | Recreation Road R-XY (R-XY) |
| System links | |
Prior to the state highways, travel across Nebraska was accomplished via foot and wagon trails. The Oregon Trail, a historic wheeled wagon route that ran from Illinois to Oregon runs through Nebraska from the Kansas border near Fairbury then north to the Platte River which it follows west into Wyoming. The Mormon Trail is a 1,300-mile (2,100 km) route that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints traveled from 1846 to 1868 which also generally follows the Platte River from Omaha to Wyoming. The Pony Express National Historic Trail stretches across Nebraska from near Fairbury, NE north to the Platte River then west along the river to Wyoming with a detour near Julesburg.
Responsibility for general improvements to roads mostly fell to the counties of Nebraska. In 1926, the Nebraska Bureau of Roads and Bridges began erecting route markers along highways, the first of which contained the famous covered wagon emblem, developed by State Engineer Robert Cochran, that is still in use today. Over the next couple of decades the state struggled with continued maintenance of the existing highway system and stagnant funding as well as difficulty procuring necessary materials with the onset of World War II.
In 1950s, the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act which established the Interstate Highway System provided an infusion of funding to Nebraska and allowed it to construct new highways as part of the new system. This included Interstate 80 which travels 455 miles (732 km) across the state. Completed in 1974 at a cost of $390 million (equivalent to $1.81 billion in 2022), Nebraska was the first state in the nation to complete its mainline contribution to the interstate system.