Western Kentucky Parkway
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The 133.79 mile Wendell H. Ford Western Kentucky Parkway is a controlled-access highway running from Elizabethtown, Kentucky to near Eddyville, Kentucky, for a length of 138 miles. It intersects with Interstate 65 at its eastern terminus, and Interstate 24 at its western terminus. It is one of nine highways that are part of the Kentucky parkway system. On May 15, 2006, the section between the Breathitt (Pennyrile) Parkway at Madisonville and Interstate 24 became part of Future Interstate 69; crews installed "Future I-69 Corridor" signs along this segment during the last week of May 2006.
The road was renamed for Wendell H. Ford, a former Kentucky governor and United States Senator, in 1998. Previously, it was simply the Western Kentucky Parkway, and often called the "WK Parkway" because of the abbreviation once used on its signs.
The original segment of the parkway was envisioned as a 127-mile toll road extending from Elizabethtown to Princeton. The bonds were issued in 1961 and construction wrapped up on the original 127.19 miles in December of 1963 at a cost of $108,548,062. In 1968, construction wrapped up on a 6.60-mile extension of the Western Kentucky Parkway from Princeton to Interstate 24 in Eddyville coming in at a cost of $5,554,468. The extension was originally proposed to be 10.30 miles but only 6.60 miles were constructed, possibly due to a design realignment of Interstate 24 near Eddyville.
The parkway was originally a toll road, as were all Kentucky parkways. State law requires that toll collection ceases when enough tolls are collected to pay off the parkway's construction bonds; that occurred in 1987. It is constructed similar to the Interstate Highway system, though sections do not measure up to current Interstate standards.
The parkway passes the cities of Leitchfield, Caneyville, Beaver Dam, Central City, Madisonville, Dawson Springs, Princeton and Eddyville. The toll plazas were, from west to east:
- Mile 10, just west of Princeton
- Exit 24, Dawson Springs
- Exit 58, Central City
- Exit 94, Caneyville (toll paid only by traffic exiting eastbound and entering westbound)
- Exit 107, Leitchfield
At exit 77 near Beaver Dam, the parkway intersects with the William H. Natcher Parkway, which goes from Bowling Green to Owensboro. At exit 37 near Madisonville, the parkway intersects with the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway, which runs from Hopkinsville to Henderson.
A service area featuring a gas station and a restaurant is located in the median, just west of the interchange with the Natcher Parkway. It is the only such service area in the entire Kentucky parkway system. (Two other service areas were once located on the old Kentucky Turnpike, a toll road from Louisville to Elizabethtown that predated the parkway system and later became part of I-65; they were closed when toll collection ended and the turnpike was officially absorbed into the Interstate Highway system.)
The section of the Ford between the Natcher Parkway interchange to the western terminus is slated to become part of the proposed extension of Interstate 66.
