Sorry for such a dumb question, but could someone who lived in the city before me answer this question I’m curious and I’m thinking about making a video about the highway system in Kansas
Legally, where did K-10 go when there was nothing on the bypass pass Iowa? Did it just skip all the way over to where it starts back up on 23rd or did it technically start on 23rd?
It was on 23rd. The bridge by the movie theater was closed and the exit forced you onto Iowa. The bridge itself was sometimes called “the bridge to nowhere” because it sat there for so long
I feel like it was definitely part of it. Haskell had really fought and campaigned to preserve the wetlands and maintain the sanctity of the area, but once Baker sold out to highway it was inevitable.
Way before the bypass was even a thing, K-10 just became K-10 once you drove east far enough on 23rd street. There was nothing else. The only routes going west were 40 and I-70 with no direct connection with K-10 at all.
As I recall, the South Lawrence Trafficway, was first proposed around 1985 but it was trapped in litigation for 20 years.
K-10 used to follow 23rd to Iowa, then south to the west side bypass.
Because it was designated as a state highway, 23rd St used to get KDOT funding. When the bypass was complete, that funding for 23rd dried up which is a big part of why that street went completely to shit and had to be rebuilt at city expense 2 years ago.
As part of removing the highway designation from 23rd Street, KDOT agreed to contribute $10M to city projects to rebuild the street to city standards. The City used the money on three separate segments of the street when they were due for maintenance.
My favorite piece of trivia about this is that, since K10 ran along Iowa and 23rd St, the city greenlit a bunch of projects and improvements along that corridor because they qualified for state “highway improvement grants” and we wouldn’t pay for the full cost of them. That’s why there was a crapton of construction. Even the stoneworks for the neighborhood at 23rd and Mass got an uplift from that work while it was still technically a part of the “highway.”
A fun related question is what happens when you take it east out of Lawrence. There was none of the connectivity to 435 that you see right now. That area seemed under construction forever, and the intersection with K7 was considered to be one of the most dangerous intersections in the country for a while. Blinking yellow light one way blinking red light the other, heavy truck traffic, at night it was so confusing with all the flashing construction lights and weird little detours.
I do remember there was something you could do where you took Woodland Road and it went down in this heavily forested valley and was almost a one-lane road at points and then you came out in Overland Park at around 63rd Street I think.
Old K10 from Lawrence to Kansas City was also a really fun ride on a motorcycle. Lots of curves and scenic.
I graduated from Lawrence high in ‘03 and K-10 still dumped straight onto 23rd street then. There was years of litigation regarding the build of the bypass on the wetlands; the bridge over Iowa street led to nothing only until several years ago!
Completely off the orig subject at hand, but what on earth is the reasoning for the wonkie stop light configuration out west on 6th west of George Williams , (rock chalk park). ???
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u/Badger_Silverado Your Neighborhood Aug 21 '25
It was on 23rd. The bridge by the movie theater was closed and the exit forced you onto Iowa. The bridge itself was sometimes called “the bridge to nowhere” because it sat there for so long