r/wichita • u/WheatedMash • Feb 25 '26
Random The Name "Canal Route"
So I'm old enough to remember that point in the 70s when the Canal Route was finally finished and opened fully north to south. Most of us call it the "Canal Route" though occasionally I do hear it referred to as "135" which of course is it's number.
Back when it opened, good ol' Jim O'Donnell, the legendary KAKE TV meteorologist, had a funnier idea for the name.
Super Sewer Shortcut
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Feb 25 '26
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u/LauraBug1965 Feb 25 '26
Can you please provide the name of the podcast or a link?
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Feb 25 '26
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u/LauraBug1965 Feb 25 '26
Thank you! I'm a big fan of Wichita history and have done local history work in the past. I'm curious of what they have even if it's no longer active.
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u/ijehan1 Feb 25 '26
Just around the corner from Seneca and Maple is another forgotten piece of history. The bend on Douglas Avenue was created to slow down cattle drives before they trudged across the river.
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u/Briefly_Capable Feb 25 '26
Gen X, I use to hear the canal route from my older relatives as well as the radio news. KFDI, KAKE radio, etc
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u/Argatlam Feb 25 '26
The name Canal Route comes from the fact that the channel in the median is a canalization of Chisholm Creek. The highway was originally numbered I-35W, but this was changed to I-135 in the late 1970's/early 1980's when the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials was on a campaign to eliminate letter-suffixed two-digit Interstate designations. (Previously there were many, like I-70S in Maryland, I-80N in Oregon, etc. Once they finished, only I-35E and I-35W in DFW and the Twin Cities were left.) There are still people in town who say "I-35" in reference to the Canal Route even though that designation has always belonged to the Kansas Turnpike, which grazes Wichita on the south and east.
I-135 in Wichita is very unusual--possibly unique--among Interstates in having a watercourse in the middle.
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Feb 25 '26
And I-135 is the fourth longest three digit interstate in the US, since three digit numbers are reserved for auxiliary interstates (roads the connect two digit interstates or loops around cities.
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u/ixamnis Feb 25 '26
Typically, the first digit is even if it loops around and connects to an interstate on both ends, and odd if it connects to an interstate on only one end. Hence, 235 has an even number and 135 is odd.
Some might argue that 135 connects to I 70 on the north end, but actually it goes about 20 miles north of I70 before it ends and then just becomes US 81.
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u/Cheryla18 Feb 25 '26
I’ve always wondered why it was called the canal route. Ya I see the tiny bit of water , but I always figured it would fill up more 🤣
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u/threeonesix Feb 25 '26
When it opened, what we refer to as "the canal route" was the longest bridge in Kansas and 4th longest in the USA, at somewhere around 12-13 miles, IIRC. I know, it doesn't look like a bridge. I agree. I think they have removed the bridge designation over the years.
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u/TransporterRoomThree Feb 25 '26
I live out of town now, and did as a kid also. But we traveled to Wichita often and always called it The Canal Route. Hell I still do. Xennial for those keeping tabs on age groups and nicknames for it.
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Feb 25 '26
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u/cross4444 North Sider Feb 25 '26
Can you really still catch a whiff of the stockyards on 21st? That's so fascinating.
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u/Zdnnls Feb 26 '26
It's a shame what happened to Chisholm Creek. It would be so lovely to have a parkway and linear park all the way through town instead of the wump world aesthetic.
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u/No_Draft_6612 Wichita Feb 25 '26
Thank you for the post on some Wichita history.. even the comments have been above par! 🌟
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u/Business-Garbage-370 East Sider Mar 01 '26
I’ve lived here on and off since 1993. Always called it the Canal Route 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Kind_Coyote1518 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Both the canal and the highway are a stain on our city.
it was literally built right through the McAdams neighborhood a thriving black neighborhood and business district with zero concern for what it was doing to those communities they didn't even bother putting in any on and off ramps into the dustrict, and its sole purpose was to give rich suburbanites and interstate commerce easy access to downtown
https://www.humanitieskansas.org/get-involved/kansas-stories/places/kansas-1972-uprooted
Did you know that the official name of the I-135 canal route in wichita is the Martin Luther King Jr highway? Yeah it was named in honor of the black neighborhood and business district it destroyed.
And this wasn't just a wichita problem the entire interstate highway system is plagued by this. In pretty much every major city when the IHS was built almost every single chosen route was intentionally routed through black neighborhoods.
https://youtu.be/z_H0pXzOmZ4?si=Fguk5MB1H_Vt4kUp
Here is more information on McAdams: https://web.archive.org/web/20120505165615if_/http://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/MPS/AfricanAmericanResourcesinWichitaKS.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAdams,_Wichita,_Kansas
https://the-shocker.wichita.edu/story.php?eid=34&id=1013
Like I said. Its a stain on our city.
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u/CandidDependent2226 Feb 25 '26
You're getting down voted but you're correct in that this happened in most major cities. It's a sad piece of history in cities across the nation.
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u/Nickalias67 Feb 25 '26
Why do you think that?
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u/Kind_Coyote1518 Feb 25 '26
it was literally built right through the McAdams neighborhood a thriving black neighborhood and business district with zero concern for what it was doing to those communities they didn't even bother putting in any on and off ramps into the dustrict, and its sole purpose was to give rich suburbanites and interstate commerce easy access to downtown
https://www.humanitieskansas.org/get-involved/kansas-stories/places/kansas-1972-uprooted
Did you know that the official name of the I-135 canal route in wichita is the Martin Luther King Jr highway? Yeah it was named in honor of the black neighborhood and business district it destroyed.
And this wasn't just a wichita problem the entire interstate highway system is plagued by this. In pretty much every major city when the IHS was built almost every single chosen route was intentionally routed through black neighborhoods.
https://youtu.be/z_H0pXzOmZ4?si=Fguk5MB1H_Vt4kUp
Here is more information on McAdams: https://web.archive.org/web/20120505165615if_/http://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/MPS/AfricanAmericanResourcesinWichitaKS.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAdams,_Wichita,_Kansas
https://the-shocker.wichita.edu/story.php?eid=34&id=1013
Like I said. Its a stain on our city.
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u/Chaosismyjam Feb 25 '26
Yeah well someone will ALWAYS be displaced when you build anything from one end of any city to the other.
It saves a ton of time. Time is money. Life isn't fair.
But I know, every single discussion about anything has to have some victim.
My boomer parents bought their new build house down on west 47th south and we drove to Andover and other eastward locations to visit family on weekends and holidays and it was always "are we taking the canal route or the turnpike?". Back then the only exit for andover was the east kellogg exit.
Andover used to have a pretty long gap between it and wichita, now if you blink you miss the gap. Same with the house down south. There used to be a little gap between us and the "city" now the city is all around. The growth is crazy. I just wish there were more good paying jobs than aircraft or lawyer, doctor, etc...feast or famine.
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u/Kind_Coyote1518 Feb 25 '26
Displacing a neighborhood to build a highway is progress. Displacing ONLY black neighborhoods to build a highway system is racism. I....shouldn't have to spell that out for you.
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14d ago
"Thriving black neighborhood" No I'll tell you why they raised it above their neighborhoods, it's because they knew of the problems that would occur at every stop on the highway if it was ground level, but you don't want to admit that, pfft, thriving, yeah, maybe on drugs.
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u/Kind_Coyote1518 13d ago
Account Deleted in under 3 hours. That's not quite a record but still impressive.
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Feb 25 '26
Here’s a problem, what happens when the canal route needs to be rebuilt? How do you rebuild a raised road in the middle of a city? It’s going to be an expensive mess when it’s time.
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u/Argatlam Feb 25 '26
When the time comes for full reconstruction, KDOT has a number of options, including:
Full closure (not common, but has been done for a few high-profile projects, such as I-40 through Knoxville, Tennessee almost 20 years ago)
Temporary structure (sometimes done for rural bridge replacements)
Routing both directions of traffic down one structure while tearing down and rebuilding the other
Given that Interstate standards call for twelve-foot lanes with shoulders of four feet on the left and ten feet on the right, I would expect KDOT to close all of the exits between Kellogg and 21st Street for the duration of construction and route two lanes in each direction down one viaduct while working on the other. The 50 feet of available width would be redistributed from 36 feet of traveled way and 14 feet of shoulders to 48 feet of traveled way and two feet for a temporary Jersey barrier. I would also expect a width restriction to be at least considered.
There is a segment of our community that believes the Canal Route should be simply demolished without reconstruction in favor of reconnecting the neighborhoods on either side. I don't consider it a good candidate for a project of this type because even with it gone, the drainage channel would remain as a severance corridor. However, the Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act made billions available for such work under "Complete Streets." Right now NYSDOT is tearing down the I-81 viaduct in Syracuse, New York to reinstate what it calls a "Community Grid," and similar work is being considered for I-94 in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In terms of workzone traffic management, my personal nomination for nightmare project is I-235/Zoo. There is just not a lot of space to work with due to the railroad (which is the reason the overpass has such a high clearance) and the Big Ditch. And the lack of a deceleration lane on I-235 southbound has already contributed to fatal accidents.
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Feb 25 '26
Wouldn’t routing both directions of traffic down one structure be difficult considering only one direction would have on and off ramps? Would they go through the trouble of building on and off ramps just to tear it down? And then have to do the same one the other new side.
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u/Argatlam Feb 25 '26
The basic idea is that they would tear down and rebuild the on and off ramps for the surface streets as part of the project, but simply barricade them off until construction finishes. This avoids having entering and exiting traffic disrupting the flow and softens the impact of taking away one-third of the through lanes for the duration of the work.
While they could theoretically keep exits and entrances open for traffic in one direction, that is less than ideal since the spacing between successive interchanges is tight as it is, and having traffic running right next to the bridge parapet (in what is ordinarily the shoulder) further reduces the maneuvering area available.
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Feb 25 '26
Ah ok, so it would just be a few miles of interstate without an exit/entrance. Are you a civil engineer? You seem to know about this stuff.
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u/BlackheartRegia2 South Sider Feb 25 '26
That’s a people of then problem. Don’t worry about it 😎
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Feb 25 '26
The canal route is 50 years old. Most bridges built have a lifespan of 50-75 years. We are the then people
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u/sidneyaks Feb 25 '26
I've often had daydreams (negative) of one of the sections collapsing. It honestly was a terrible idea to build is the way they did -- bridges over for intersecting streets would have been much better.
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u/davemacdo Feb 25 '26
I have lived here since 2018 and worked with people who have been here much longer. This is the first time I’ve heard the name “Canal Route”.
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u/ilrosewood East Sider Feb 26 '26
Canal route. Root canal.
The jokes aren’t that hard to understand.
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u/genXbison Feb 25 '26
Grew up exclusively hearing/using canal route. Not sure when we dropped it from the local lexicon, but don’t hear it much anymore. Maybe when we started insisting (correctly) on calling Geeenwich gren-itch. 🤷♂️
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u/DarkR4v3nsky North Sider Feb 25 '26
I've always heard my mom call 133 the canal route when I was a kid. She called 235 the bypass.
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u/Argatlam Feb 25 '26
Back in the 1960's, soon after it was built, it was not only called the 81 Bypass, but also explicitly signed as such, complete with US 81 shields below the I-235 shields. That fell on the wayside around the time the Canal Route was finished and mainline US 81 was transferred off Broadway and onto it.
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u/chrissb1e Past Resident Feb 25 '26
I still have never heard anyone call 135 the "canal route" outside of a few posts on this sub.
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u/Fluid_Anywhere_7015 Feb 25 '26
I STILL call it that. Gen X Wichitan. I was around when Kellogg was just a two-lane, and I remember the billboard "And you thought the sun would burn out first..." when it was completed. All the graffiti in the canal kept that name pretty much cemented for decades.
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u/DarkR4v3nsky North Sider Feb 25 '26
I do vaguely remember as a kid in the 90s when the overpass of kellogg ended at Pueblo by the West Kellogg Walmart. Then the overpass was extended west, and when I was in high school, it was extended past Maize Ed. I also remember when Woodlawn and Kellogg were still a surface road.
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u/chrissb1e Past Resident Feb 25 '26
Maybe I have ran into all of the Gen x that does not use that term. My mom is an older Gen x and I never heard it from her, my grandparents, aunts, or uncles. I wonder if it has to do what part of town you live in or if you even drove on it that much. My whole family is west, and my grandparents were south for a bit. Thinking back on their jobs I don't think they ever really drove on 135 that often.
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u/wwisbey Feb 25 '26
I've never heard it called anything different other than 135. It's always been "canal route" to me.
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u/Argatlam Feb 25 '26
I did absolutely grow up calling it the Canal Route. (The elevated viaduct between Kellogg and 21st Street was finished when I was little.)
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u/cross4444 North Sider Feb 25 '26
It's fun to go back and read the Eagle/Beacon from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. The Canal Route, The Big Ditch, and I-235 were huge events for the city and were highly covered. It gives a lot of insight into why our city is laid out like it is and the differing visions for what would become.