page_title: U.S. Route 1
section_title: New England
hierarchical_section_title: U.S. Route 1 / Route description / New England
caption_attribution_description: Photo of the northern terminus of US Route 1 in Fort Kent, Maine
context_page_description: U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs 2,369 miles, from Key West, Florida north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, making it the longest north–south road in the United States. US 1 is generally paralleled by Interstate 95, though the former is significantly farther west between Jacksonville, Florida, and Petersburg, Virginia. The highway connects most of the major cities of the East Coast—including Miami, Jacksonville, Raleigh, Richmond, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston passing from the Southeastern United States to New England.
  While US 1 is generally the easternmost of the main north–south U.S. Highways, parts of several others occupy corridors closer to the ocean. When the road system was laid out in the 1920s, US 1 was mostly assigned to the existing Atlantic Highway, which followed the Fall Line between the Piedmont and the Atlantic Coastal Plain north of Augusta, Georgia. At the time, the highways farther east were of lower quality and did not serve the major population centers.
context_section_description: In New England, US 1 generally serves large cities in a side street capacity.  In Connecticut, US 1 serves the shore of the Long Island Sound parallel to I-95. Beyond New Haven, the highway travels east–west, and some signs in the state indicate this rather than the standard north–south. While I-95 in Rhode Island takes a diagonal path to Providence, US 1 continues east along the coast through Westerly to Wakefield, where it turns north and follows Narragansett Bay. Most of this part is a four-lane divided highway, providing access to Route 138 towards Newport. After Route 4 splits as a mostly-freeway connection to I-95, US 1 becomes a lower-speed surface road, passing through Warwick, Providence, and Pawtucket. The route parallels I-95 again through Providence and Pawtucket and into Massachusetts, traveling towards Boston as a four-lane road. When it reaches Dedham, US 1 turns east, overlapping I-95 and I-93 east to Braintree and north through Downtown Boston. The Tobin Bridge and Northeast Expressway take US 1 out of Boston, after which it again parallels I-95 through Newburyport to the New Hampshire state line.
  The short portion of US 1 in New Hampshire follows the historic Lafayette Road, staying close to I-95, passing through Portsmouth before crossing the Piscataqua River on Memorial Bridge, which was demolished and replaced during 2012–13, leaving a temporary gap in US 1. During construction, drivers had to detour to one of two other nearby bridges carrying U.S. Route 1 Bypass or Interstate 95. Within Maine, US 1 begins as a parallel route to I-95 near the Atlantic Ocean. At Portland, I-95 splits off to the north, and I-295 heads northeast paralleling US 1 to Brunswick. There US 1 turns east as a mostly two-lane road along the coast to Calais; much of this portion is advertised as the "Coastal Route" on signs. North from Calais, US 1 follows the Canada–US border, crossing I-95 in Houlton and eventually turning west and southwest to its "north" end at the Clair-Fort Kent Bridge in Fort Kent. The short Route 161 extends north on the New Brunswick (Canada) side of the bridge to Route 120, a secondary east–west route from Edmundston, New Brunswick west to Quebec Route 289 toward Saint-Alexandre, Quebec.
caption: The monument marking the northern terminus in Fort Kent, ME
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