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Interstate 270 (Missouri–Illinois)

Auxiliary Interstate Highway in Illinois and Missouri in the United States

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ1072040
Source-derived summary

Interstate 270 (I-270) makes up a large portion of the outer belt freeway in Greater St. Louis. The counterclockwise terminus of I-270 is at the junction with I-55 and I-255 in Mehlville, Missouri; the clockwise terminus of the freeway is at the junction with I-55 and I-70 north of Troy, Illinois. The entire stretch of I-270 is 50.59 miles (81.42 km).

I-270 between I-70 and I-55 was formerly designated I-244, a western bypass of St. Louis, Missouri. It was originally proposed by Missouri as I-144, but the road was a beltway (or part of one), so the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) assigned it the number I-244. By the late 1970s, the entire beltway (including today's I-255) was integrated as a part of I-270 for consistency. However, the politicians in Illinois started planning their supplemental freeway system in the mid-1970s, and a five-mile (8.0 km) section of Corridor 413 was included into the Interstate Highway System in April 1978. This caused a potential place of confusion in Pontoon Beach, Illinois, where I-270 would have intersected itself, and eventually the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) decided on the I-255 numbering in 1980 (but not before considering renumbering an eight-mile (13 km) section to I-870).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Interstate 270 (Missouri–Illinois)” is auxiliary Interstate Highway in Illinois and Missouri in the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Interstate, Missouri and Illinois, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1978, 1980—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1956. For this dossier, Interstate, Missouri and Illinois is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “auxiliary Interstate Highway in Illinois and Missouri in the United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1072040. Authority coordinates are 38.757, -90.032. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978 and 1980.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Interstate 270 (Missouri–Illinois)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.