The Indiana Toll Road: the northern edge, 1956

1954–1956 · THE TOLLWAY

The toll road was built past the city's north edge in two years, and a South Bend firm laid its first miles: The Indiana Toll Road Commission's own 1954 report records the start: construction of the $280,000,000 Northern Indiana East–West Toll Road began on 21 September 1954, and the first construction contract went to a Hoosier firm — Rieth-Riley Construction Company of South Bend and Goshen, the lowest of twenty bids — for 7.4 miles through western St. Joseph and eastern LaPorte counties, to be complete by 30 June 1956. The report's construction photography is captioned in St. Joseph County, at Sycamore Road; Governor George Craig climbed aboard a bulldozer at the groundbreaking some fifteen miles northwest of South Bend. The road's purpose, in the commission's framing, was "the final link in a continuous tollway from Chicago to New York" — seven hundred miles of toll road end to end.

Four routes had been considered from the end of the Ohio Turnpike, the southernmost swinging toward Fort Wayne; the route chosen was the northernmost, and it passed north of South Bend. The road opened in stages, east to west, through the summer of 1956: the first half, from the Ohio line to US 31 outside Roseland, north of South Bend, opened 16 August 1956; the road reached LaPorte on 5 September and US 20 in Gary on 16 September; the formal dedication ceremony was held on 17 September 1956 in South Bend; and the road was complete on 15 November 1956, without fanfare. It runs 156.28 miles; the full-length passenger-car toll in 1956 was $1.95. Its documented effect on the city's edge is written in its interchanges: the 1956 road met the city's north–south highway at Roseland, on the Dixie Highway line — the crossing that fixed the commercial geography of the city's north side for a generation — and the junctions have since multiplied: Exit 72 at US 31, opened 27 October 1980 with the St. Joseph Valley Parkway, its Nimtz Parkway connection opened 3 September 1993; Exit 77 at State Road 933, the old sequential Exit 8, signed for the University of Notre Dame; and Exit 83 at State Road 331, Capital Avenue in Mishawaka, opened 17 November 1982 — boundary ground, printed here because the junction is the region's. The sequential exit numbers were converted to mileage-based numbers in 1981. Forty-eight years after it opened, the road reached into this section again: the 2006 lease of the Toll Road financed the Major Moves program that built the new US 31 freeway south of the city.

Sources:

1. Indiana Toll Road Commission, Roads — Streets — Highways — Indiana Toll Road (1954), read at archive.org — the $280,000,000 road, construction begun 21 September 1954, the first contract to Rieth-Riley Construction Company of South Bend and Goshen as lowest of twenty bids for 7.4 miles in western St. Joseph and eastern LaPorte counties for completion by 30 June 1956, the Sycamore Road construction photography, the scheduled completion of 15 November 1956, and the "final link in a continuous tollway from Chicago to New York."
2. The road's opening record — the staged 1956 openings (Ohio line to US 31 at Roseland, 16 August; LaPorte, 5 September; Gary, 16 September), the formal dedication in South Bend on 17 September 1956, completion 15 November 1956, the 156.28-mile length, the $1.95 full-length passenger toll (Hammond Times, 16 September 1956), the four routes considered and the northernmost chosen, and Governor Craig's bulldozer groundbreaking northwest of South Bend.
3. The Toll Road's interchange record — Exit 72 (US 31) opened 27 October 1980, Nimtz Parkway connection 3 September 1993; Exit 77 (State Road 933, old Exit 8) serving the University of Notre Dame; Exit 83 (State Road 331) opened 17 November 1982; sequential-to-mileage exit renumbering in 1981.