Why Is There No Interstate 50 Or 60?

Why Is There No Interstate 50 Or 60?

Rohaan Sakrani

Sun, February 8, 2026 at 5:25 PM UTC

A view of Interstate 94, the Ford Building, and North Minneapolis on a cloudy day - Horn Art Studio/Shutterstock

At the very inception of the interstate system, officials decided the numbers would not be random. Highways already existed at the time, and they needed a network that would coexist alongside them and be scalable nationwide.

All they had to do was borrow and flip the logic of the U.S. highways number codes, meaning only long-distance routes between regions were assigned one- and two-digit numbers. Similarly, routes running north to south were assigned odd numbers, while even numbers went to routes running east to west.

To make it easy for people to discern routes that were nationally significant, numbers that ended with zero or five were reserved. Some of these major routes are now among the best highways in the U.S., according to truckers. Reserving these numbers shrank the pool of numbers available for other routes, but that doesn't explain the absence of some numbers entirely.

Why I-50 and I-60 were never options

A truck heads south on Interstate 69 in snowy weather - Jeremy Hogan/Getty Images

Some omissions are simply absent to avoid duplication. The chosen numbers had to be unique within each state, and that's why Interstate 50 could never work. An east-to-west Interstate would have overlapped large parts of the country that the U.S. Route 50 already went through, crossing from the east coast to California. The same number being used for both roads in the same states would have caused confusion, which is exactly what the numbering system was designed to avoid.

Interstate 60 faced a similar problem. U.S. Route 60 was already a well–known east–west highway when interstate numbers were being assigned. The planners wanted the interstate system to integrate with the existing highway network instead of overwriting it. To do this, they decided it was best to skip these numbers, rather than renaming or displacing existing routes. Although many of those old highways are now lost, U.S. Routes 50 and 60 are still around.

What the missing numbers reveal about the interstate system

Freeway entrance to the I-99 South Freeway - Lori Butcher/Getty Images

The "missing" I-50 and I-60 are only two symptoms of the interstate system's design. Other inconsistencies remain, such as interstate numbers that repeat in different parts of the country. Others, like I-99, appear far out of geographic sequence. These outcomes reflect political decisions and practical limitations that emerged as the system evolved. Once routes were built, renumbering them for the sake of elegance offered little benefit to drivers.

Anyway, the interstate system exists for ease of movement and national connectivity, not numerical neatness. As long as motorists can understand direction and connection at a glance, the system is doing its job.

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