U.S. Route 63 in Iowa

U.S. Highway 63
US 63 highlighted in red
Route information
Maintained by Iowa DOT
Length	237.758 mi (382.634 km)
Existed	July 1, 1926 (1926-07-01)–present
Major junctions
South end	US 63 near Bloomfield
Major intersections	US 34 in Ottumwa I-80 near Malcom US 6 near Malcom US 30 at Toledo US 20 at Waterloo US 218 at Waterloo US 18 at New Hampton
North end	US 63 at Chester
Location
Country	United States
State	Iowa
Counties	Davis Wapello Mahaska Poweshiek Tama Black Hawk Bremer Chickasaw Howard
Highway system
United States Numbered Highway System List Special Divided Iowa Primary Highway System Interstate US State Secondary Scenic
← Iowa 62 → Iowa 64

U.S. Highway 63 (US 63) is a United States Highway that runs through the eastern third of Iowa. It begins at the Missouri state line southwest of Bloomfield and travels north through Ottumwa, Oskaloosa, Tama, Waterloo, and New Hampton. It ends at the Minnesota state line at Chester. Between Ottumwa and Oskaloosa, the highway is a four-lane controlled-access highway. Through Waterloo and New Hampton, it is partially controlled; that is, the road as both grade-separated interchanges and at-grade intersections. The rest of the highway is largely a two-lane rural highway.

While US 63 was created in 1926, it dates back eleven years prior to the creation of the Daniel Boone Trail, which sought to be the best north–south highway in an era when most routes traveled from east to west. Through Iowa, it traveled through Ottumwa, Oskaloosa, Prairie City, Des Moines, Boone, and Algona. Upon creation of the primary highway system in 1920, the Daniel Boone Trail was assigned a series of route numbers. When the U.S. Highway System was created in 1926, US 63 was assigned to the path that had been the Daniel Boone Trail, but only from the Missouri state line to the state capitol in Des Moines. 1934 brought major changes to the U.S. Highway System as a whole and US 63 had a major realignment. Instead of turning to the northwest at Oskaloosa, it now traveled north through Tama, Waterloo, and New Hampton, eventually reaching Lake Superior at Ashland, Wisconsin.

Since then, the routing of US 63 has served the same communities, but the route has been adjusted as new highway projects have been completed. Significant infrastructure projects in Ottumwa and Waterloo in the 1950s through the 1970s updated the roadway to modern standards. In the 1990s and 2000s, large parts of the US 63 corridor found itself removed from planning budgets while other portions of the route were widened to four lanes. Portions of a Des Moines-to-Burlington corridor that included US 63 were widened to four lanes in the 1990s through the mid-2000s. Through Waterloo, all of US 63 north of the Cedar River was rebuilt in the 2010s. It was expected that the renewed highway would be a catalyst for economic growth in the area.