page_title: Fort Washington Way
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Washington Way / History / Construction
context_page_description: Fort Washington Way is an approximately 0.9-mile-long section of freeway in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. The eight-lane divided highway is a concurrent section of Interstate 71 and U.S. Route 50 that runs from west to east from an interchange with I-75 at the Brent Spence Bridge to the Lytle Tunnel and Columbia Parkway.
  Fort Washington Way is named after Fort Washington, a fort that preceded the establishment of Cincinnati. One of the city's first freeways, it was conceived in 1946 as the Third Street Distributor in conjunction with a major urban renewal project along the riverfront. It opened in 1961 after one of the most expensive road construction projects per mile in the United States. Fort Washington Way's complex system of ramps made it the most crash-prone mile of urban freeway in Ohio. During the late 1990s, it was rebuilt with a simpler, more compact configuration, improving traffic safety and facilitating the riverfront's redevelopment as The Banks.
context_section_description: On August 8, 1955, construction began on the first of many "piers" in the distributor system, a one-quarter-mile (0.40 km) connector between the Louisville & Nashville Bridge and the Third Street Viaduct. Work began in earnest with the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which allocated federal funds to the $21 million project. In January 1958, demolition began on Third Street buildings, including St. Philomena's Church, to make way for the distributor.
  The Cincinnati Times-Star editorial board proposed that the new highway be named "Fort Washington Freeway". The fort's gunpowder magazine had been rediscovered a few years earlier on land near the highway's path. Supporters of the Fort Washington name included the Cincinnati Enquirer editorial board and Mrs. William T. Buckner, a representative of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Daughters of 1812 whose great-grandfather William Henry Harrison once served at the fort. On February 20, 1958, the state's Anthony Wayne Parkway Board threw its support behind this name and also proposed naming the Mill Creek and Northeast expressways after General Anthony Wayne and George Rogers Clark, respectively. Other suggestions for the distributor included "Queen City Freeway" (after the city's nickname, "Queen City of the West"), "Cincinnati Gateway", "Queen's Freeway", and "Cincinnatus Parkway" (after Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the city's namesake). The city chose "Fort Washington Way" that March.
  On June 29, 1961, Fort Washington Way opened to traffic. At approximately $10 million per mile, Fort Washington Way, along with the Third Street Viaduct that connected it to Columbia Parkway, was one of the most expensive road construction projects in the United States. Modern Highways magazine called it "fantastically complex". Though it had only two through lanes in either direction, Fort Washington Way measured 680 feet (210 m) wide, enough for 11 lanes, cutting off the central business district from the riverfront. During the Riverfront Stadium project from 1968 to 1970, numerous left-hand entrance and exit ramps were added in close proximity. By the time the Lytle Tunnel opened in 1970, Fort Washington Way's 23 entrance and exit ramps were the densest set of ramps in the country. Fort Washington Way was one of five local landmarks featured in the title sequence of the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.
caption: Fort Washington Way and Riverfront Stadium in 1973
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