The Highway Loophole That Created The Worst Town in America

TL;DR

A 1956 federal highway law forced Pennsylvania to reroute I-70 through a random quarter-mile strip of commercial sprawl called Breezewood.

Key Points

• 1.The Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76), built in the 1940s as America's first modern highway, was a toll road — conflicting with Eisenhower's Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which required interstate highways to be free.
• 2.Federal law gave Pennsylvania two choices: stop collecting tolls or provide a free alternative route, so they extended I-70 off the turnpike onto US-30, a normal four-lane surface road, for just a quarter mile before rejoining the highway.
• 3.That mandatory quarter-mile detour created a rare gap in the interstate system, making Breezewood one of the only places in America where a strip mall is directly plugged into the national highway backbone — forcing 5.5 million drivers through it annually.
• 4.Pennsylvania is now planning a direct connection between I-70 and the Turnpike, which would eliminate the legal quirk and effectively make Breezewood irrelevant.