Alabama State Route 277

State Route 277 is a 9.350-mile (15.047 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Alabama, running along part of former U.S. Highway 72 in Jackson County. Upon completion of the present US-72 expressway in the 1990s, the old road was given to the county and cities of Stevenson and Bridgeport to maintain as County Road 74, but the local governments convinced the state to take back the road, which was redesignated SR-277 in March 2003.

County leaders and city leaders in Bridgeport and Stevenson were not happy about the road being their responsibility and turned down requests to take the road back several times. The roadway has many bridges and is designed in such a way that maintenance of the road was deemed too expensive for Jackson County. After a large effort by the county and local state legislators to get the route back under state control, ALDOT reluctantly took back the highway as SR-277, insisting that they would swap mileage with State Route 35 west of Scottsboro. However, that mileage swap never occurred and SR-35 west of Scottsboro remains a state-controlled highway.

SR-277 does not include all of former US-72. The route is nine miles (14 km) long and only includes the portions between the interchange of old US-72 and US-72 east of Stevenson to US-72 just east of Bridgeport.

SR-277 runs on the original Memphis and Charlston RR bed and the ride-a-way is narrow being from the edge to edge of the payment.

Major intersections

The entire route is in Jackson County.

References