 U.S. Highway 63 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 US 63 highlighted in red | ||||
| Route information | ||||
| Maintained by Iowa DOT | ||||
| Length | 237.758 mi (382.634 km) | |||
| Existed | July 1, 1926–present | |||
| Major junctions | ||||
| South end |  US 63 near Bloomfield | |||
| North end | US 63 at Chester | |||
| Location | ||||
| Country | United States | |||
| State | Iowa | |||
| Counties | ||||
| Highway system | ||||
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U.S. Highway 63 (US 63) is a United States Highway that runs through the eastern third of Iowa. It begins at the Missouri state line southwest of Bloomfield and travels north through Ottumwa, Oskaloosa, Tama, Waterloo, and New Hampton. It ends at the Minnesota state line at Chester. Between Ottumwa and Oskaloosa, the highway is a four-lane controlled-access highway. Through Waterloo and New Hampton, it is partially controlled; that is, the road as both grade-separated interchanges and at-grade intersections. The rest of the highway is largely a two-lane rural highway.
While US 63 was created in 1926, it dates back eleven years prior to the creation of the Daniel Boone Trail, which sought to be the best north–south highway in an era when most routes traveled from east to west. Through Iowa, it traveled through Ottumwa, Oskaloosa, Prairie City, Des Moines, Boone, and Algona. Upon creation of the primary highway system in 1920, the Daniel Boone Trail was assigned a series of route numbers. When the U.S. Highway System was created in 1926, US 63 was assigned to the path that had been the Daniel Boone Trail, but only from the Missouri state line to the state capitol in Des Moines. 1934 brought major changes to the U.S. Highway System as a whole and US 63 had a major realignment. Instead of turning to the northwest at Oskaloosa, it now traveled north through Tama, Waterloo, and New Hampton, eventually reaching Lake Superior at Ashland, Wisconsin.
Since then, the routing of US 63 has served the same communities, but the route has been adjusted as new highway projects have been completed. Significant infrastructure projects in Ottumwa and Waterloo in the 1950s through the 1970s updated the roadway to modern standards. In the 1990s and 2000s, large parts of the US 63 corridor found itself removed from planning budgets while other portions of the route were widened to four lanes. Portions of a Des Moines-to-Burlington corridor that included US 63 were widened to four lanes in the 1990s through the mid-2000s. Through Waterloo, all of US 63 north of the Cedar River was rebuilt in the 2010s. It was expected that the renewed highway would be a catalyst for economic growth in the area.