U.S. Route 1

U.S. Route 1
US 1 highlighted in red
Route information
Length	2,369.49 mi[1] (3,813.32 km)
Existed	November 11, 1926 (November 11, 1926)–present
Major junctions
South end	Fleming Street in Key West, FL
Major intersections	I-95 in Miami, FL I-20 near Aiken, SC I-77 in Columbia, SC I-40 in Raleigh, NC I-85 / US 460 near Petersburg, VA I-64 / I-95 in Richmond, VA I-83 in Baltimore, MD I-76 in Philadelphia, PA I-87 in New York, NY I-90 / I-93 in Boston, MA
North end	Route 161 at the Fort Kent–Clair Border Crossing
Location
Country	United States
States	Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine
Highway system
United States Numbered Highway System List Special Divided
← US 425 US → US 2 ← Route 32A N.E. → Route 1A

U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 (US 1) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs 2,370 miles (3,810 km) from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, making it the longest north–south road in the United States.^[2] US 1 is generally paralleled by Interstate 95 (I-95), though US 1 is significantly farther west and inland between Jacksonville, Florida, and Petersburg, Virginia, while I-95 is closer to the coastline. In contrast, US 1 in Maine is much closer to the coast than I-95, which runs farther inland than US 1. The route connects most of the major cities of the East Coast from the Southeastern United States to New England, including Miami, Jacksonville, Augusta, Raleigh, Richmond, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York City, New Haven, Providence, Boston, and Portland.

While US 1 is generally the easternmost of the main north–south U.S. Routes, parts of several others occupy corridors closer to the ocean. When the road system was laid out in the 1920s, US 1 was mostly assigned to the existing Atlantic Highway, which followed the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line between the Piedmont and the Atlantic Plain north of Augusta, Georgia.^[3] At the time, the highways farther east were of lower quality and did not serve the major population centers.^[4] From Henderson, North Carolina, to Petersburg, Virginia, it is paralleled by I-85. Construction of the Interstate Highway System gradually changed the use and character of US 1, and I-95 became the major north–south East Coast highway by the late 1960s.