The Mill Creek Expressway is a heavily trafficked portion of Interstate 75 in Ohio, from the Ohio River at the Kentucky state line to Butler County in Cincinnati's northern suburbs. The Mill Creek Expressway's current alignment follows the path of its namesake, Mill Creek, and the former path of the Miami and Erie Canal, and passes through the city's industrial core.
History
The Mill Creek Expressway generally follows the old Miami and Erie Canal, which extended from Cincinnati to Toledo via Dayton, itself built in the Mill Creek valley near Cincinnati. The canal extended from the Ohio River along the present locations of Eggleston Avenue and Central Parkway to Mt. Storm Park, and continued north, remaining close to the Mill Creek Expressway to Butler County. The never-opened Cincinnati Subway was built in the 1920s, mostly using the abandoned canal right-of-way from downtown to the State Route 562 interchange at St. Bernard. The first portion of the expressway was built by the Works Progress Administration in 1941 – during World War II – to serve the Wright Aeronautical plant in Lockland. Known then as the Wright Highway, it was initially planned to run from Paddock Road in Carthage north to Cincinnati-Dayton Road near Maud, but was only built — almost completely along the old canal — between Galbraith Road and Glendale-Milford Road (then State Route 126. A short extension was built south to Towne Street in Elmwood Place in the late 1940s. In 1960, plans were announced to add an eastern portion that would result in Arlington Heights being surrounded on both sides by the highway. On January 19, 2015, an overpass north of Hopple Street collapsed onto the highway below at approximately 10:30pm. The span that failed was the segment of the former northbound ramp to Hopple Street that passed over the southbound lanes of I-75. The overpass had been closed and was in the process of being removed after a replacement ramp was opened on December 26, 2014. The interstate underneath was open at the time of the failure. One construction worker on the overpass was killed during the collapse by a falling steel beam. A truck driver was injured when his semihit the fallen overpass immediately after the collapse. One other worker was in a backhoe on the bridge but was uninjured.
