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List of state routes in Pennsylvania

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ98756513 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) is responsible for the establishment and classification of a state highway network which includes Interstate Highways, U.S. Highways, and state routes. U.S. and Interstate highways are classified as state routes in Pennsylvania.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania established the Location Referencing System (LRS) in 1987, which registers all numbered routes in Pennsylvania as SR-X. A state route would be SR 39, a US Route would be SR 22, and an Interstate route would be SR 80. However, routes which are numbered between 0000 and 0999 are classified as Traffic Routes, which are abbreviated as PA 39, US 22, and I-80, instead.

There are also four-digit numbers for various "state roads" over which PennDOT has jurisdiction, but those numbers are not displayed on the roads, except in rural areas, where they are posted with index-card-sized small signs. In urban areas, these numbers are somewhat less prominently posted, and these streets are known by the names on the street signs.

History

In 1911, when the Sproul Road Bill was passed, a large number of Legislative Routes (LR) were assigned. These were the primary internal numbering until the present Location Referencing System was adopted in 1987. See also: List of legislative routes in Pennsylvania.

Signed Traffic Route numbers from 1 to 12 were first assigned in 1924 to several of the national auto trails:

Italics denote former routes.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “List of state routes in Pennsylvania” as wikimedia list article. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

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—1987, 1911, 1924—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where List, state and routes can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as wikimedia list article. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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 Feb 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q98756513. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1911 and 1924.

Critical limits

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of state routes in Pennsylvania” 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.