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u s highways

How U.S. highways are numbered is surprisingly systematic.

A bunch of years ago, our family traveled around the United States as nomads for a year, driving thousands of miles through dozens of states. And throughout the entirety of that kind of epic road trip, I never once learned that there's a system for how our highways are numbered. It always seemed random, but it's so very not.

A viral Facebook post sharing just two basic principles of interstate highway numbering blew my mind, and also the minds of approximately 196,000 other people who shared the post in the past few days. Rich Evans included two images showing the East-West interstate highways and the North-South interstate highways with this explanation:

"I always knew there was a logic to it, but I never saw it explained so well until I stumbled upon this delightfully informative short video on how the US interstates are numbered.

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