Portal:U.S. roads/Selected article/December 2010

New York State Route 74 (NY 74) and Vermont Route 74 (VT 74) are adjoining state highways in the northeastern United States, connected by one of the last remaining cable ferries in North America. Together they extend for 35 mi through Essex County, New York, and Addison County, Vermont. NY 74 begins at exit 28 off Interstate 87 (I-87) in the hamlet of Severance in the Adirondack Mountains region of the northern part of New York State. It extends 20.44 mi to the western shore of Lake Champlain in Ticonderoga. There, the seasonal Fort Ticonderoga – Larrabees Point Ferry carries cars across the state border into Vermont, where VT 74 starts at the lake's eastern shore and terminates 13.26 mi later at a junction with VT 30 in the town of Cornwall.

NY 74 is a descendant of the historic Ticonderoga and Schroon Turnpike, which was a privately owned highway chartered in 1832, and segments of NY 74 follow the alignment of the original 19th century turnpike. The connecting ferry route predates both NY 74 and VT 74 and began operation in 1759 on an informal basis. The ferry operation formalized at the close of the 18th century and upgraded to a cable system in 1946.

Due to extensive changes in designations in both states during the 20th century, the entire length of the present highway consists of renamed segments from other highways. The New York portion of the cross-state Route 74 west of Ticonderoga was designated as part of NY 73 in the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, while the Vermont section carried several different designations from the 1920s to the late 1930s, when it became solely part of VT F-9. NY 73 was extended east to Lake Champlain in the 1950s—replacing NY 347—and VT F-9 was split into VT 73 and VT 74 shortly afterward. The Schroon–Ticonderoga highway was redesignated as NY 74 ca. 1973 after NY 73 was cut back to its current eastern terminus in Elizabethtown.

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