Sam Cooper Boulevard

Sam Cooper Boulevard

Maintained by	City of Memphis and TDOT
Length	5.8 mi (9.3 km)[1]
West end	US 64 / US 70 / US 79 / SR 277
East end	I-40 / I-240

Sam Cooper Boulevard is an urban highway in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. The more recent western segment of the road follows a parkway design, while the older eastern portion, which was proposed and constructed as a segment of Interstate 40 (I-40), was built as a controlled-access highway, without at-grade intersections and traffic lights. The western terminus of Sam Cooper Boulevard is at East Parkway North. At the western termination point of the road there is a short concurrency of East Parkway North with U.S. Route 64 (US 64), US 70, and US 79.^[2] From its western end, Sam Cooper Boulevard continues east for 5.8 miles (9.3 km) to reach its eastern terminus at the I-40/I-240 interchange.^[1]

The road was originally planned in the 1950s. It was proposed as a segment of I-40 that would intersect the center of Memphis and continue west to Arkansas. The proposed route would have cut through Overton Park, an old forest public park in Memphis. Following a United States Supreme Court decision in 1971 the route was revised, I-40 was routed around Memphis in the north and plans of routing an Interstate highway through the city were abandoned. Ownership of the completed segments of the highway was transferred to the City of Memphis.^[3] As a road that is owned and maintained by the City of Memphis, no route number is assigned to Sam Cooper Boulevard.^[4]