Photos courtesy of Newtown Square Historical Society
Marple was a country crossroads for much of its history. Today, that crossroads is just a mile from the interstate highway that skirts Marple’s eastern border. If different choices had been made, the interstate would have crossed through Marple’s neighbor, Newtown Township. The highway known by old-timers as the “Blue Route” had its roots in planning starting in the 1920s. The explosive growth of Delaware County’s suburbs in the mid-1950s accelerated the Blue Route’s planning, to take pressure off local two lane north-south roads like Rte 252 and Rte 320, which had served the area since the 1700s.
Planners offered and color-coded three possible routes through the county: red, blue and green. As with many public improvement projects, everyone wanted the benefits of the project but no one wanted the highway in their back yard. The Green Route would have avoided Marple entirely, crossing West Chester Pike at the Dunwoody property and running east of Bryn Mawr Avenue and on into Radnor. In 1960, the Blue Route was chosen, over opposition. Governor Scranton approved the choice in 1963, over opposition. The final plan received federal approval in 1965, again over opposition. Ground was broken in 1966, and sections were built through Marple and Haverford. For 25 years, those sections sat unused other than by area teenagers. Delays increased the 1956 price tag from $30 million to an estimated $173 million.
The enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 gave opponents a new tool to fight the highway — Environmental Impact Statements and related court challenges. In 1980, a task force recommended a scaled down version reducing the roadway from six to four lanes south of the West Chester Pike interchange. That proposal was approved by the Federal Highway Administration; and legal appeals followed. While the appeals wound their way through courts, in 1979 the first section opened between the Schuylkill Expressway at Conshohocken and Chemical Road in Plymouth Meeting.
In 1986 the US Supreme Court upheld a decision to allow construction to proceed. On December 19, 1991, the Blue Route fully opened to traffic, connecting I-95 in Chester with the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Plymouth Meeting. The final cost of the planned $30 million highway? $750 million. For Newtown residents, the benefits were instantaneous—the airport, I-95, the Walt Whitman Bridge and South Jersey and the Turnpike were all now a 20-minute drive at 65 miles per hour.
For more on the history of Marple or information about the Marple Historical Society’s events and activities, visit our website (www.MarpleHistoricalSociety.org) or our Facebook page. We hope to soon resume open houses at the Massey House.
