New Jersey State Highway 24
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New Jersey State Highway 24 is a state highway in New Jersey, United States.
Originally, NJ 24 ran from Phillipsburg, New Jersey to Newark. In 1974, that route was split into New Jersey State Highway 57 at Hackettstown, ith the rest from the Musconetcong River eastward still known as 24. The western portion was decommissioned section still signed as NJ 24 even though the road had never been state-maintained. NJDOT has tried to remove signs from the county-maintained section, but locals protested because they known it as 24.
At that time, 24 ran across Morris County through Long Valley (Washington Township), Chester, Mendham, Morristown, Madison and Chatham, to the old Morris and Essex Turnpike along the Union-Essex county line between Short Hills and Summit, then Morris Avenue in Springfield and eventually making its way to Newark along Springfield Avenue.
By the early 1970s the section along the county line had been expanded into the beginning of the current freeway starting at Interstate 78 in Springfield. For many years the freeway was useful only to local residents and visitors to The Mall at Short Hills, where it ended. The section across Chatham to shortly past the still-existing unused cloverleaf interchange at the Florham Park borough line once signed as the Tri-Borough Road, a never-built southern extension of the Eisenhower Parkway was cleared and graded at the same time but halted for many years due to legal, environmental and budgetary problems. It was finally completed to the intersection with Interstate 287 in Hanover, New Jersey in the mid-1990s, and at that time the 24 designation was limited to strictly that freeway.
Ironically, the first section to be upgraded to a freeway is today the only remaining section that follows the highway's original route.
An earlier proposal to extend the freeway beyond that junction, to allow a bypass around Morristown completely to where it would rejoin the old two-lane route in Mendham, has been scrapped as there was no politically feasible route to the north of the Morris County seat.
At the other end, the road was to continue eastward as I-278, but that 7.2-mile section between I-78 and the current end of I-278 has never been built.
The former signed route was redesignated as 124 from the junction with US 202 in Morristown, to the boundary between Maplewood and Irvington.
The old route west of Morristown is now just County Route 510 in some places, but still signed as Old Route 24.