Utah State Route 176 (1933–1969)

Utah State Route 176 was a state highway in entirely within the cities of Salt Lake City and South Salt Lake in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States. It mainly functioned as an alternate route for US-89, US-91, and I-15 traffic that provided access to industrial areas of the two cities and avoided urban cross-traffic in Downtown Salt Lake City. The original route followed 900 South west from State Street (Salt Lake County) (concurrent US-89 and US-91) to 300 West and then traveled north on 300 West to meet US-89 and US-91 again at South Temple (or, later, at North Temple). The route was subsequently changed to follow 300 West only: it followed 300 West all the way from 3300 South (SR-171) to North Temple (traffic from either I-15 or State Street could reach the southern end along short stretches of SR-171).

Before the mid-20th century, 300 West was confusingly known as Second West, based on the idea of numbering streets from the nearest corner of Temple Square rather than just from the southeast corner (which is the only origin recognized by the modern Salt Lake County addressing system).

Route description

300 West

From 1967 to 1969, SR-176 started at an intersection with SR-171 in South Salt Lake only about a block east of I-15 and proceeded straight north as a four-lane (plus, as of 2012, a center turn lane) road without continuous sidewalks (300 West continues south of this point before swerving east to avoid crossing the FrontRunner and Union Pacific railroad corridor (Rio Grande's Utah Division during the 1960s) at an acute angle and connects to a short frontage road of 3900 South, but was never a state highway). The road runs down the middle of an isolated strip of land cut off from its surroundings by I-15 on the west and the TRAX light rail line (previously Union Pacific's mainline to Provo) on the east; the freeway is always between a block and two blocks to the west and the rail line is exactly a block to the east. The area is occupied almost totally by industrial and specialized wholesale businesses that benefit from relatively easy access to the freeway (and, in some cases, the railroad's freight service) without suffering from the difficulty in access from surrounding neighborhoods.

300 West passes under I-80 about a mile north of SR-171, and then crosses the TRAX Green Line (originally Rio Grande's line to Park City) before intersecting SR-201 (2100 South), the first major east-west street north of 3300 South, and enters Salt Lake City. Due to the east-west traffic and the easy access from the major freeway crossing just to the west, this area has many big box stores (as of 2012).