State Highway 81 (SH-81) is a

state highway A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either ''numbered'' or ''maintained'' by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a ...

Cassia County Cassia County is a county in the U.S. state of Idaho. As of the 2020 Census the county had a population of 24,655. The county seat and largest city is Burley. Cassia County is included in the Burley, ID Micropolitan Statistical Area. History ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

. The highway runs for from SH-77 in

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

U.S. Route 30 U.S. Route 30 or U.S. Highway 30 (US 30) is an east–west main route in the system of the United States Numbered Highways, with the highway traveling across the northern tier of the country. With a length of , it is the third longest ...

(US-30) in Burley. It also has a short

spur route A spur route is a short road forming a branch from a longer, more important road such as a freeway, Interstate Highway, or motorway. A bypass or beltway should not be considered a true spur route as it typically reconnects with another or the s ...

connecting the highway to Interstate 84 (I-84) at the Yale Interchange. Prior to its designation as SH-81 in 1972, the highway was part of U.S. Route 30S (US-30S), a multi-state national highway that traveled from Burley to

Granger, Wyoming Granger is a town along Blacks Fork near the western edge of Sweetwater County, Wyoming, United States.} The population was 139 at the 2010 census. It is located near the confluence of the Blacks Fork and the Hams Fork rivers. The geography o ...

Route description

State Highway 81 begins at an intersection with SH-77 in

, located north of the

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

state line. The highway travels north, following the eastern foothills of the Cotterell Mountains and the

Raft River The Raft River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 4, 2011 tributary of the Snake River located in northern Utah and southern Idaho in the United States. It is part ...

valley, through Idahome to Interstate 84, which it parallels for several miles heading northwest. SH-81 completes its turn west and heads towards Declo, intersecting SH-77. The highway continues west along the southern side of the

Snake River The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake ...

, parallel to the

Eastern Idaho Railroad The Eastern Idaho Railroad commenced on November 21, 1993, as a collection of two disconnected clusters of former Union Pacific (UP) branches. A subsidiary of Watco, EIRR operates two segments that move more than 35,000 carloads per year to the Un ...

. It terminates at an intersection with US-30 (co-signed with Interstate 84 Business) south of

Burley Municipal Airport Burley Municipal Airport is a mile northeast of Burley, in Cassia County, Idaho. The airport was rededicated as Burley J R Jack Simplot Airport in October 2002, honoring J. R. "Jack" Simplot. History A stop on the Contract Air Mail Route ...

on the banks of the Snake River, just east of downtown Burley.

History

U.S. Route 30S, which traveled from Burley to

via

Logan, Utah Logan is a city in Cache County, Utah, United States. The 2020 census recorded the population was 52,778. Logan is the county seat of Cache County and the principal city of the Logan metropolitan area, which includes Cache County and Franklin ...

, was established in 1926 as an alternative route to U.S. Route 30N. It was moved to the completed Interstate 80N (later I-84) in 1970, and decommissioned entirely in 1972. SH-81 was established by the Idaho State Board of Highway Directors on September 12, 1972, to preserve state maintenance of the highway between Burley and the

state line. In 1983, the Idaho Transportation Board studied an extension of SH-81 from Burley to Twin Falls to replace an existing section of US 30. It was later truncated in the early 1990s to its current terminus at SH-77 in Malta.

Major intersections

Spur route

ID-81 has a

connecting the main highway to Interstate 84, traveling east along Yale Road to the Yale Interchange.

References

External links