Texas State Highway 3
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| State Highway 3 |
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| Length: | 30.4[1] mi (48.9 km) | ||||||||
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| Formed: | 1939[1] | ||||||||
| South end: |  SH 146 in La Marque |
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| Major junctions: |
 Beltway 8 near Ellington Field |
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| North end: |  I-45 in Houston |
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State Highway 3, or SH 3, is a state highway in the U.S. state of Texas that runs from Interstate 45 in Houston near William P. Hobby Airport to State Highway 146, 9.9 miles (15.9 km) northwest of Galveston. For most of its length, SH 3 parallels I-45 and runs alongside the former Galveston, Houston and Henderson rail lines.
SH 3 was one of the original twenty six state highways proposed in 1917, overlayed on top of the Southern National Highway. From 1919, the routing mostly followed present day United States Highway 90 from Orange to Houston and San Antonio through to Del Rio. The road at this time also had numerous alternate routes simultaneously marked as SH 3, along with occasionally signed SH 3A routes (although most of those routes were given their own numbers by the 1930s).
In 1926, United States Highway 90 was routed over SH 3 to Del Rio. Its route was extended along US 90 through Sanderson, Alpine to a final terminus at Van Horn. While the routes were marked concurrently, by 1939, SH 3 was truncated to a small route running from Seguin, Luling to Waelder. By 1952, the original route ceased to be, and the present day routing was assigned.
SH 3 is sometimes referred to as Old Galveston Road, indicating its function as a thoroughfare between Houston and Galveston.
