The Last Gap in I-45

The twelve miles of Interstate 45 between Fairfield and Streetman in Freestone County were the last gap in the freeway between Houston and Dallas. The section opened on 13 October 1971, which, according to the Federal Highway Administration, completed I-45 between the two cities apart from work still to be done in Dallas itself. That was fifteen years after the first Interstate project in Texas under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was let, in 1956, for a section of the same road in Navarro County near Corsicana. Until 1971 traffic between Fairfield and Streetman used the last remaining stretch of U.S. 75, which a history of the route published by AARoads describes as having become quite dangerous by the time it was replaced.

The interstate came together from both directions. The Streetman to Corsicana section opened in 1960, and by 1961 the freeway ran south from Hutchins, below Dallas, past Corsicana, except for the bypass around the town, which followed in about 1964. From the south it came up in pieces: the Huntsville bypass in 1959, Huntsville to Madisonville in 1965, Madisonville to Centerville in 1967, Centerville to Buffalo in 1969 and Buffalo to Fairfield in 1971. The freeway was mostly built along the existing U.S. 75. When U.S. 75 was decommissioned south of Dallas, its old route from Conroe to a point about three miles north of Streetman was designated State Highway 75, on 28 January 1987.