SR 100: How did it come to be?

Originally posted on 20 April 2015.

QUESTION: When was Indiana State Road 100 created?

ANSWER: Well, that is kind of hard to pinpoint.

To answer this question, I have to know which SR 100 you want to know about. There have been, well, four different SR 100s, all related, yet not directly.

SR 100 is one of those roads that almost every road geek knows the story of.  It was built to be a loop around the city of Indianapolis.  And only two sides were completed, the east and the north.

Well, not quite. Originally, SR 100 was designated during WWII to connect Indianapolis to the Municipal Airport (now Indianapolis International). High School Road from Washington St. (US 40) south was SR 100.

This is where it gets fun. The state also created, during WWII, a state road that ran from Fort Harrison to SR 431 in Nora. This road ran along 56th St. to Shadeland, then north along Shadeland to 82nd St, then west along 82nd/86th to Westfield Blvd. This sounds like SR 100, right?

Not so much. This route was SR 534. I am still not quite sure the need to connect Fort Harrison to Nora, but there it was.

By 1948, the route was changed on the eastern end, running from Washington St. north to 82nd St. along Shadeland. The north side was extended to Michigan Road, as well. Still, it was SR 534. SR 100 still connected the Airport to US 40 at Ben Davis.

By 1952, SR 534 was changed to SR 100.

Along the way, there were two other sections of SR 100. One, on the south side of Indianapolis, was only 1/2 mile long, and connected SR 37 (Bluff Road) to SR 135 (Meridian Street) along Troy Avenue. When Bluff Road was bypassed, this section of SR 100 was decommissioned.

One other section of SR 100 in the history of Indiana. When I-465 was designed, it was to travel from I-65 on the west side at around Lafayette and 62nd St (now the long exit ramp from I-465 north to I-65 north), all the way around to connect again to I-65 west of Zionsville (now I-865). I-465 wasn’t a complete loop.

The state, in an effort to connect to two sections of I-465 on the west side (from 62nd St. to north of 96th St.) designed a connector road with the designation SR 100. This section of the road is where the business park there, Park 100, got its name. This designation only lasted one, maybe two, years. Then IDOH received permission to redesignate this section of SR 100 to I-465…thus creating 25 years of confusion with the dogleg (or, as I call it, the original 465).

Hope that helps.

(All information for this post comes from Official Indiana State Highway maps.)