 U.S. Highway 61 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 US 61 highlighted in red | ||||
| Route information | ||||
| Maintained by Iowa DOT | ||||
| Length | 192.663 mi (310.061 km) | |||
| Existed | July 1, 1926–present | |||
| Major junctions | ||||
| South end |   US 61 / US 136 south of Keokuk | |||
| North end |  US 61 / US 151 at Dubuque | |||
| Location | ||||
| Country | United States | |||
| State | Iowa | |||
| Counties | ||||
| Highway system | ||||
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U.S. Highway 61 (US 61) is a United States Highway that serves eastern Iowa. It enters the state from Missouri near Keokuk with US 136. North of Keokuk, it is overlapped by US 218 for a few miles. It the follows the course of the Mississippi River past Montrose and Fort Madison. It meets US 34 at Burlington. It passes through Wapello and bypasses Muscatine and Blue Grass on its way toward Davenport. There, it follows Interstate 280 (I-280) and I-80 around the Quad Cities. North of Davenport, it follows a freeway north toward DeWitt where it meets US 30. The highway continues north through Maquoketa and reaches the Dubuque area. There it is joined by US 151 and briefly by US 52. The two highways enter the downtown area on an expressway. Due to the proximity of the Mississippi River and railroad tracks that lie between, the routes have an indirect junction with US 20. The two highways leave the state and enter Wisconsin about one-half mile (800 m) north of the Illinois–Wisconsin state line.
The route that would become US 61 was organized as a branch of the Burlington Way. Then in 1920, the Iowa State Highway Commission organized the primary road system, which assigned the branch of the Burlington Way that passed through Davenport and Dubuque a route number: Primary Road No. 20. Six years later, the U.S. Highway System was created and most of No. 20 was renumbered US 61. The early U.S. Highways passed through every town within a reasonable distance along the route. Road construction projects that began in the 1950s sought to rebuild and straighten all across the state. As traffic increased in populated areas, the highway commission started building four-lane highways like Kerrigan Road in Dubuque. In the 1970s, work began to widen US 61 to four lanes in rural parts of the state. The freeway section between Davenport and DeWitt opened in 1975. Muscatine was bypassed by a four-lane road in the 1980s. In Dubuque, the aging Eagle Point Bridge was in need of replacement, so US 61 and US 151 traffic was rerouted through East Dubuque, Illinois, until the Dubuque–Wisconsin Bridge opened in 1982. Shortly thereafter work commenced on connecting the new bridge to Kerrigan Road via downtown Dubuque.
Through the mid-1990s and early-2000s, road construction projects consisted of twinning existing rural parts of US 61. A bypass of Maquoketa was built and the four-lane road was extended north from DeWitt to Dubuque by the end of the 1990s. South of Davenport, a four-lane connection to Muscatine was completed while bypassing Blue Grass. More recently, US 61 was rerouted out of downtown Davenport because a low-clearance railroad bridge had a tendency to get hit by semi truck drivers who misjudged the height of their trucks. In the 2010s, a bypass of Fort Madison opened and twinning projects began again south of Muscatine.