U.S. Route 5
highway in the United States

U.S. Route 5 (US 5) is a north–south United States Numbered Highway running through the New England states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Significant cities along the route include New Haven, Connecticut; Hartford, Connecticut; and Springfield, Massachusetts. From Hartford northward to St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the road closely follows the route of the Connecticut River.
The entire route of US 5 is closely paralleled by Interstate 91 (I-91). US 5 now serves as the local business route and alternate route for the Interstate Highway. The northern terminus of US 5 is in Derby Line, Vermont, at the Canada–United States border, where it continues past the Derby Line–Stanstead Border Crossing into Quebec as Route 143, which was Route 5 until renumbered in the mid-1970s. Its southern terminus is in New Haven, Connecticut, at an intersection with I-91.
Route description
US 5 runs through three states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, with the latter containing over half of US 5's total distance. Throughout nearly all of US 5's entire length, it remains its own road entirely separate from I-91, which has largely replaced it as a through route (and now carries most of the traffic).
“U.S. Route 5” enters the record as highway in the United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Route, highway and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“U.S. Route 5” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Route, highway and United provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q406273. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “U.S. Route 5” 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.