Skip to main content

Arizona Loop 101

This past week I had a flight path out of Sky Harbor International Airport which crossed over Arizona Loop 101 on the border of Scottsdale and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.


AZ Loop 101 is an approximately 61 mile Loop Freeway stretching from Interstate 10 in the Western Phoenix Valley to AZ 202.  The route of AZ 101 carries several designations:

-  From I-10 northeast to I-17 the path of AZ 101 is known as the Agua Fria Freeway which is named after a West Valley River.

-  From I-17 southeast to AZ 202 the path of AZ 101 is known as the Pima Freeway.  The above picture is from part of the Red Mountain Freeway segment of AZ 101.  The Pima name comes from Pima Road and the namesake reservation.

-  From AZ 202 southward back to AZ 202 the path of AZ 101 is known as the Santan Freeway.

In the original planning stages AZ 101 carried the designation of AZ 417 for the Agua Fria Freeway section and AZ 117 being part of the Pima/Price.  AZ 101 was legislatively defined in 1987 as a Loop Freeway of the Phoenix Metro Area.  The original segment of AZ 101 to open was along the Price Freeway which was originally designated as part of AZ 202.  AZ 101 was fully completed by the turn of the century in the early 2000s with a segment from Tatum Boulevard eastward through Scottsdale.

My personal experience along AZ 101 was mostly along the Pima Freeway corridor given that I was mostly living in the East Valley in the 2000s.  In 2006 the City of Scottsdale introduced Photo Enforcement which was subject to controversy.  The reasoning behind the Photo Enforcement was due to the high fatality rate along the Red Mountain Freeway.  It quickly became suspected by many (myself included, hence the personal opinion) that the City of Scottsdale was more interested in additional funding by calibrating the Photo Enforcement Towers to 11 MPH over the limit rather than safety.  Some of the ticket revenue was given to local company Red Flex to process the photo enforcement tickets.  In 2010 Photo Enforcement of the Pima Freeway in Scottsdale ended, the rest of the city largely followed.

AZ 101 along the other Phoenix Loop Freeways originally had colored shields.  In the case of AZ 101 the shield color was blue, I have one in my personal collection.


The blue AZ 101 shields were largely replaced with black and white variants in the 2000s.  Blue AZ 101 shields can still be found on several surface streets such as McDonald Boulevard and Shea Drive in Scottsdale.  The shield below is from Shea Boulevard heading eastbound at the AZ 101/Pima Freeway interchange.




Comments

Unknown said…
L101 in Tempe/Chandler is actually the "Price Freeway."

Popular posts from this blog

Chowchilla Mountain Road to Yosemite National Park

Chowchilla Mountain Road of Mariposa County is one of the oldest roadways servicing Yosemite National Park.  As presently configured this fourteen-mile highway begins at California State Route 49 near Elliot Corner and terminates at the Wawona Road in Yosemite National Park.  Chowchilla Mountain Road was constructed as a franchise toll road over Battalion Pass circa 1869-1870.  The highway was built at behest of Galen Clark to connect the town of Mariposa to his property near the South Fork Merced River at what is now Wawona.   In late 1874 the highway along with Clark’s Station would be purchased by the Washburn Brothers.  The Washburn Brothers would continue to toll Chowchilla Mountain Road as part of their Yosemite Stage Route lines.  The highway would ultimately become a Mariposa County public highway in 1917.  Mariposa would later be more directly linked with Yosemite Valley in 1926 following the completion of the Yosemite All-Year Highwa...

Interstate 40's Tumultuous Ride Through the Pigeon River Gorge

In the nearly 60 years Interstate 40 has been open to traffic through the Pigeon River Gorge in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it has been troubled by frequent rockslides and damaging flooding, which has seen the over 30-mile stretch through North Carolina and Tennessee closed for months at a time. Most recently, excessive rainfall from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 saw sections of Interstate 40 wash away into a raging Pigeon River. While the physical troubles of Interstate 40 are well known, how I-40 came to be through the area is a tale of its own. Interstate 40 West through Haywood County near mile marker 10. I-40's route through the Pigeon River Gorge dates to local political squabbles in the 1940s and a state highway law written in 1921. A small note appeared in the July 28, 1945, Asheville Times. It read that the North Carolina State Highway Commission had authorized a feasibility study of a "...water-level road down [the] Pigeon River to the Tennessee l...

Angus L. Macdonald Bridge

At 1.3 kilometers (or about 0.84 miles) in length, the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge is one of two bridges crossing over the Halifax Harbour between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the other bridge being the A. Murray Mackay Bridge . Opened in 1955 and named after former Nova Scotia Premier and Canadian Minister of Defense for Naval Services Angus L. Macdonald, the Macdonald Bridge was the first bridge that crossed Halifax Harbour that was opened to traffic. The Macdonald Bridge was also the subject of the Big Lift, which was only the second time in history that the span of a suspension bridge were replaced while the bridge was open to traffic. Planning began in 2010 for the Big Lift, while construction took place between 2015 and 2017. Similar work occurred on the Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia before the project took place on the Macdonald Bridge. At this time, much of the bridge infrastructure is new, leaving only the towers, main cables and...