U.S. Route 74
highway in the United States

U.S. Route 74 (US 74) is an east–west United States highway that runs for 515 miles (829 km) from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Primarily in North Carolina, it serves as an important highway from the mountains to the sea, connecting the cities of Asheville, Charlotte and Wilmington. It is known as Andrew Jackson Highway throughout most of North Carolina.
Route description
Tennessee
US 74 was designated in 1927. The 63-mile (101 km) route travels from the I-24/I-75 interchange, in Chattanooga, northeast to Cleveland, where it then continues east, along with US 64, to the North Carolina state line. The highway is predominantly freeway or expressway grade four-lane, except between Ocoee and Ducktown, where it is a curvy two-lane mountain highway along the Ocoee River known as the Ocoee Scenic Byway.
TDOT's signage for US 74 is poor. Most highways that cross it will typically only list I-75 or US 64 instead; I-75 completely ignores US 74 along its route, even ignoring it at their intersection, showing instead the US 64 Bypass.
North Carolina
From the Tennessee state line, US 74 traverses across the southern portion of the state, connecting the major cities Asheville, Charlotte, and Wilmington, for a total of 451.8 miles (727.1 km).
In western North Carolina, US 74 enters the state with a concurrency with US 64.
“U.S. Route 74” 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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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q410368. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “U.S. Route 74” 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.