page_title: Interstate 45
section_title: Richland to Dallas (Julius Schepps Freeway)
hierarchical_section_title: Interstate 45 / History / Richland to Dallas (Julius Schepps Freeway)
caption_attribution_description: English: Interstates in today's terms I-20 (later moved south) I-30 I-35E I-45 I-635
context_page_description: Interstate 45 is an Interstate Highway located entirely within the U.S. state of Texas. While most Interstate routes ending in "5" are cross-country north-south routes, I-45 is comparatively short, with the entire route located in Texas. It connects the cities of Dallas and Houston, continuing southeast from Houston to Galveston over the Galveston Causeway to the Gulf of Mexico.
  I-45 replaced US 75 over its entire length, although portions of US 75 remained parallel to I-45 until its elimination south of downtown Dallas in 1987. At the south end of I-45, State Highway 87 continues into downtown Galveston. The north end is at Interstate 30 in downtown Dallas, where US 75 used the Good-Latimer Expressway. A short continuation, known by traffic reporters as the I-45 overhead, signed as part of US 75, and officially Interstate 345, continues north to the merge with the current end of US 75. Traffic can use Spur 366 to connect to Interstate 35E at the north end of I-345.
  The portion of I-45 between downtown Houston and Galveston is known to Houston residents as the Gulf Freeway.
context_section_description: The Central Expressway was the first freeway in Dallas, built as a new alignment of US 75. It first opened between San Jacinto Street and Fitzhugh Avenue in 1949, and soon stretched south to Hutchins. However, the stretch through downtown ran along the surface, as did the part south of the bridge over the Trinity River, due to diversion of funds to the north portion. By the late 1950s, a bypass to the east of the downtown section was planned. By the time construction reached Hutchins, in about 1955, the state decided to build further segments to full freeway standards. By 1961, the freeway was complete between Hutchins and the State Highway 14 split at Richland, except for the bypass around Corsicana, which was built ca. 1964. This freeway was mostly built along the existing US 75; one of the projects in Navarro County, near Corsicana, was the first Interstate project in Texas approved under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
  It was not until 1964 that I-345, extending I-45 north along the proposed Central Expressway bypass, was added as a proposed state highway. I-45 and I-345 were built and opened in the 1970s, with the final section, between Lamar Street (exit 283A) and the Central Expressway (exit 283B), opening on February 25, 1976. At the north end, before it merged into the Central Expressway (which continued to carry US 75), I-345 straddled the bridges over Bryan Street and Ross Avenue, the latter the location of the opening ceremonies in 1949. Because of their location, these two bridges were not replaced in the 1990s reconstruction of the North Central Expressway, and are the only surviving grade separations from the initial construction north from downtown.
  At the time the interchange with I-20 was built, the freeway that crossed I-45 was then a part of I-635; it would not be until later when, initially, I-20 was added to I-635 as a multiplex, then later still, I-635 would be truncated away from the I-45 interchange (back around to just north of what is now I-20's interchange with US 175).
  Reconstruction and widening to six lanes, from the Ellis-Navarro county line (between exits 243 and 244) north to State Highway 310 (exit 275), began in 1991. The last section, near the north end, was completed in 2002.
caption: 1955 "Yellow Book" plan for Interstates in Dallas
exif: {}