State Route 95 or Bicentennial Highway is a state

highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It includes not just major roads, but also other public roads and rights of way. In the United States, it is also used as an equivalent term to controlled-access highway, or ...

located in the southeast of the U.S. state of

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

. The highway is an access road for tourism in the

Lake Powell Lake Powell is a reservoir on the Colorado River in Utah and Arizona, United States. It is a major vacation destination visited by approximately two million people every year. It holds of water when full, second in the United States to only the ...

and Cedar Mesa areas, notably bisecting Bears Ears National Monument and providing the only access to Natural Bridges National Monument. The highway does not serve any cities, but the small town of Hanksville is its western terminus. Although the highway has existed since the 1930s as a primitive dirt road, it received its name at its dedication as a paved state highway coincident with the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. The highway forms part of the Trail of the Ancients

National Scenic Byway A National Scenic Byway is a road recognized by the United States Department of Transportation for one or more of six "intrinsic qualities": archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and scenic. The program was established by Co ...

Route description

It runs west from the junction of U.S. Route 191 (4.3 miles south of the town of Blanding), to the junction of SR-24 in the town of Hanksville. It crosses Cottonwood Wash just west of the US-191 junction; follows and crosses White Canyon; and crosses the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

and the northeast end of

at Hite Crossing Bridge, near the confluence of the Dirty Devil River, which it crosses just two miles (3 km) later. west of the US-191 junction it meets State Route 261 on Cedar Mesa, west of there State Route 275 spurs off to the northwest to Natural Bridges National Monument, and it intersects with State Route 276 twice, on either side of Lake Powell. It passes by the now closed Fry Canyon Lodge in Fry Canyon, which opened in 1955 and closed in 2007. Fry's Canyon (also referred to as Fry's Gulch) contained the only gas station between Hanksville and Blanding, but it has since closed and there are no services on the route itself. A seasonal gas station is in operation at the Hite Marina area during the summer months.

History

SR-95 was added to the state highway system in 1935 as a spur connecting SR-47 (now US-191) near Blanding with Natural Bridges National Monument. It was extended in 1949, crossing the

at Hite and continuing to SR-24 at Hanksville. Except for a short piece near Blanding, the road remained unpaved through the 1960s. The first major realignment was approved in 1962 and completed in 1966, bypassing the old crossing at Hite, which is now flooded by

, in favor of the new Hite Crossing Bridge. Utah Department of Transportation
Highway Resolutions
, updated November 2007, accessed May 2008 The highway was improved and paved in time for the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, and has since been known as the Bicentennial Highway.

Major intersections

References

External links

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