Talk:Utah State Route 186

Corrections to article
This article is incorrect. SR-186 was formerly US-40 through Salt Lake, with 21st south as the truck route/alternate route. I've seen it signed as such, and may even have photos somewhere. Although, the alignment of US-40 has changed and this was not always the case. Just assembling a list of sources in prep for a future correction to the article, please add more if you have them:

Maps detailed enough to show route of US-40 through Salt Lake (the ones currently used as sources aren't)
 * 1963, Shows US-40 along North Temple, even past Redwood Road, but shows Foothill Blvd. as US40-Alt. Shows 21st south as US50A only, no shields where US-40 presumably would have ran if Foothill blvd was US-40A.


 * Early 1970s, Shows full length of modern SR-186 as US-40, 21st south as US-50 ALT


 * 1974, Shows US-40 routed on N. Temple street west of Redwood road (the extent of I-80 at the time). Past Redwood Road, N. Temple is signed US-40 AlT turning at 3rd west, again at 4th south to Foothill Blvd. 21st south is shown as US-50 ALT

UDOT Sources Page 6 shows a map attached to a memo dated 1963, again US-40 shown on N. Temple Street. US-40 ALT, US-50 ALT on 21st south.
 * 1959, Route Description for SR-181 Shows US40 on N.Temple to 3rd west, then to 9th south, then to state street, then to 21st south. Shows SR-186 as US-40 ALT. This is consistent with my memory that 3rd west was the truck route for US-89.
 * 1963, Route Description for SR-201

Other Sources with possible clues:
 * Mentions that the infrastructure for the Salt Lake trolley system along modern Foothill Blvd. started to be dismantled in the 1920s to make way for a new road project (fix the discontinuity in the route mentioned in the article????, source isn't specific). In the late 1930s the dismantling was stopped. With world war on the horizon the local authorities were persuaded by the feds to keep the few still functional routes of the trolley system up an running until after WWII was over. The yards and power facilities along modern Foothill Blvd were dismantled in 1944-1946, with one remaining electrical sub-station that is still there, now used for the residential areas around Foothill Blvd.

Connecting those dots, it appears US-40 was originally, perhaps temporarily, routed along 21st south. Sometime between 1963 and 1974 was moved to what is now SR-186, where it remained until truncation. Will attempt to find more sources to fill in the gaps before fixing the article.Dave (talk) 01:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Foothill street names
Besides the questions about the historic highway numbering above, there is confusion about the name of the street sometimes referred to as Foothill Blvd. South of about 1100 South, the names Foothill Blvd and Foothill Dr are both in use. North of Sunnyside Ave (850 South, former SR-65), Foothill Blvd is most common, though the sign at the intersection with Sunnyside Ave now says Foothill Dr (the name does not matter much in this area since there are essentially no buildings facing on to the street that would need to have addresses assigned). The part in the middle (from about 850 South to 1100 South) is the most problematic because, though it is commonly referred to as Foothill Blvd, residents of the houses facing onto it likely have to give their addresses in terms of 2100 East Street to avoid confusion with the old route of Foothill Dr, which is now a small residential street a short distance west. I assume that the name Foothill Blvd was made up when the new road was built to try to avoid this problem (by having Foothill Blvd and Foothill Dr be distinct for that short distance), but it does not seem to have been effective because Salt Lake County residents are not used to treating suffixes like Dr and Blvd as significant for addressing; the fact that many maps still show the short segment of SR-186 as 2100 East and that the brand new street signs at the Sunnyside-SR186 intersection say Drive rather than Blvd seem to indicate that the issue remains unresolved.

Esetzer (talk) 03:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Really? I always thought Foothill Boulevard was an erroneous designation for the road. I'm pretty sure that this should entirely be Foothill Drive. I could see how the boulevard suffix was used when the extension between 2100 East and the University opened in the 1950s, but today UDOT calls this Foothill Drive. Of course, there is that old section of Foothill Drive between 2100 East and 900 South that's still in use, but, as you say, there are no houses/businesses on the new(er) stretch so this doesn't cause any conflict.

As for US-40: By 1948, US-40A ran from the mouth of Parleys Canyon north on Foothill to the current intersection of 2100 East. However, instead of Foothill Drive continuing north past this intersection, it continued northwesterly (along that old Foothill Drive alignment I previously mentioned) to Sunnyside, turned west, turned north on 1300 East, and then west along 500/400 South.

By 1954, Foothill Drive as we know it today existed and US-40A was routed along it.

By 1965, US-40A and US-40 (which then ran along 2100 South) switched routes. US-40 would run along Foothill until its truncation in the mid-1970s. CL (T · C) — 03:36, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

North of Sunnyside Avenue there is essentially no building frontage, but between Sunnyside Avenue and what I called about 1100 South (where SR-186 leaves alignment with 2100 East) there are houses that appear to face onto SR-186 (there may well not be any driveways connecting onto it anymore, but that is not the biggest criterion for address assignment) at the same latitude as the old Foothill Drive. Even if there are no houses still using 2100 East addresses, having two different Foothill Drives (or even one Foothill Drive and one Foothill Boulevard) could cause problems; imagine someone trying to follow directions going east on Sunnyside Avenue and being told to turn right on Foothill Drive (or, to abbreviate, on Foothill). I do not think that a clean solution (with no duplicated or confusingly similar names right in the same area) to this issue is likely in the near future (the most likely "clean" outcome would probably be that people eventually start calling the old Foothill Drive "Old Foothill Drive").

I was not trying to get involved in the US Route numbering discussion since I suspected that US-40 and US-40A (and US-50 at times) had alternated between modern SR-186 and 2100 South for uninteresting reasons... Esetzer (talk) 05:57, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

What is less uninteresting is the earlier route of US-40 (alternate or otherwise) along Sunnyside Avenue that you mentioned. The 800South-900South corridor (from Glendale west of downtown to Emigration Canyon) seems to have been very important historically (certainly for railroads), yet I have not seen any evidence that the majority of it west of 2100 East was ever covered by US routes or state routes. Esetzer (talk) 18:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

1300 East in 1935: SR-181 or SR-186?
The second paragraph of this article says that 1300 East from 500 South to 2100 South was SR-181, but SR-181 (UT) says that the same street was part of SR-181 in 1935. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Esetzer (talk • contribs) 19:34, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Reading through the UDOT resolutions, it looks like that was SR-181. In 1935, SR-186 was defined to run via the "Diagonal" (I'm assuming that's Foothill), which didn't exist at the time. I'm guessing the confusion is related to the US-40A designation, which would have run down 1300 East along SR-181 to the junction with US-40 at 2100 South (SR-4). --Roadguy2 (talk) 02:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Did US-40A use Sunnyside or 900 South?
The article currently states that for a brief period around 1950, US-40A followed Sunnyside Avenue and 1300 East to make up for the still-being-constructed segment of Foothill. Yet according to this map, it followed 900 South. Given today's street pattern, this seems quite odd; 900 South is a little two-lane residential street while Sunnyside is a 4 or 5 lane arterial. Roadguy2 (talk) 02:28, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know, but I would say the routing depicted in the linked map doesn't make any sense. I'd guess it's a map error, temporary routing (due to construction or whatever) or maybe even a copyright trap.Dave (talk) 09:41, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * This got me curious, so I went and had a look at Historic Aerials (link here). Unfortunately, the maps seem to split up right between Sunnyside and 9th South, and the first map of the 900 South/Foothill junction isn't until 1954, after Foothill was completed and 40A moved onto it. But from what I can piece together, the historic topo maps seem to support the above 1950 map, believe it or not. Normally I'd think we just go with the 900 South routing, but it makes no sense because 900 South looks like this. Would UDOT really have wanted to send cross-country traffic through a neighborhood like that? Roadguy2 (talk) 06:25, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * To make it even more complicated, I've found a State Farm map from 1940 which clearly shows SR-186 on Sunnyside. Roadguy2 (talk) 21:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)