End of US highways 166 and 400, outside Joplin MO

Photo credits: Rich Carlson; Jeremy Lance; Jeff Morrison

Highway Approx. time period
US 166 1965-present
US 400 1994-present

The photo below is approaching the east end of US 166/US 400:

Morrison, Jan. 2006

As you can see, this highway just barely makes it into Missouri: just beyond the speed limit sign is a "JCT I-44" sign, and just past that the assembly shown below was posted:

Morrison, Jan. 2006

That's no longer there - it was removed when a new roundabout was put in for access to a new casino. This is not the original alignment of US 166 - rather, this road was built as a connector to I-44 sometime in the 1950s. US 166 continued to be signed east of here until 1965, when the designation was cut back to this interchange. US 400 was commissioned in 1994, and its east end has always been here. It's co-signed with US 166 for about 8 miles (from Baxter Springs KS to this point), and the two routes share the same eastern terminus. The I-44 interchange is just ahead - the green mileage sign points straight ahead to "Joplin 7", and right (to the westbound on-ramp) says "Tulsa OK 99". That "End" assembly has changed in recent years; the photo below shows what it used to look like:

Lance, 2000

That looks vaguely familiar, doesn't it? I'm guessing that assembly was reworked into the sign shown in the first photo above. The shot below shows the signage for the east beginning of US 166/400 from eastbound I-44:

Carlson

I don't know exactly when that photo was taken (probably about 2000), but the sign has since been replaced; you can see it in the distance of the photo below...

Morrison, Aug. 2010

...but I included that shot to demonstrate how close US 166/400 comes to Oklahoma. It's also interesting how Joplin has annexed all the way out to the stateline - the exit for central Joplin is another 7 miles ahead. Anyway, on to the sign itself:

Morrison, Aug. 2010

Interesting how the control city was changed from "Galena" to "Baxter Springs", and it's unfortunate that such ugly US route shields were used. I wonder if the casino paid for the new signs, in return for getting the name of their road on the sign. I imagine the corresponding sign for westbound traffic has been changed by now too:

Morrison, Jan. 2006

If you take that exit, you'll still be in Missouri when you see the first westbound confirmation markers...

Morrison, Jan. 2006

...but not by much: the car with headlights on is right about at the Kansas state line. That's also right about where the aforementioned roundabout is now situated. If you go left at the roundabout, you can then turn to the south onto a little-known and poorly-maintained road that leads about a half-mile south, to the southeast corner of Kansas / northeast corner of Oklahoma.

(The following is not road-related, but since I'm a fan of geographical points-of-interest, I'll use the rest of this page to digress. If you don't care about state triple-points, you can escape by using one of these links...

...back to the main US 166 page...

...or back to the main US 400 page.)

This particular tri-point would've been established no later than 1857, which is when the Kansas-Oklahoma line was surveyed. Below is a photo of the nearby 1930s monument:

Morrison, Jan. 2006

Jeff reports that stands entirely in Kansas - it may have been built there because the actual point was on the road (or at least its right-of-way). A few feet to the east sits a newer monument:

Morrison, Jan. 2006

Based on what I've read elsewhere on the web, that may occupy the former location of a benchmark, which disappeared sometime during the 1990s.