page_title: Interstate 40 in California
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Interstate 40 in California / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Start of Interstate 40 near Barstow, California. Picture taken in 1997.
context_page_description: Interstate 40 is a major east–west Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from Barstow, California, to Wilmington, North Carolina. The segment of I-40 in California is sometimes called the Needles Freeway. It goes east from its western terminus at Interstate 15 in Barstow across the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County past the Clipper Mountains to Needles, before it crosses over the Colorado River into Arizona east of Needles. All 155 miles of I-40 in California are in San Bernardino County.
context_section_description: In 1957, the California Department of Highways proposed that the route be numbered as I-30 because of the already existing U.S. Route 40 in the state. However, this was rejected, and eventually US 40 was decommissioned in favor of I-80.
  Today, the Needles Freeway replaced the former Route 66 across the Mojave Desert. As a result, a number of communities along the former route like Amboy have become ghost towns.
  In the early 1960s, a proposal as part of Project Plowshare would have detonated 22 nuclear explosions to excavate a massive roadcut through the Bristol Mountains to accommodate a better alignment of Interstate 40 and a new rail line. This proposal was definitively abandoned in 1968.
  A sign in California showing the distance to Wilmington, North Carolina has been stolen several times.
caption: Former mileage sign at start of Interstate 40 in Barstow, California
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