State Highway 200 (SH-200) is an east–west state highway in northern Idaho, United States. It travels along the north side of Lake Pend Oreille and the Clark Fork River between the Sandpoint area and the Montana border, where it continues as Montana Highway 200. The highway is also a national scenic byway that is named the Pend Oreille Scenic Byway.[3] This state highway is part of a continuous chain of similarly numbered state highways that stretch approximately 1,356 miles (2,182 km) from Minnesota to Idaho.
ID-200 is the westernmost portion of a chain of Highway 200s which extends east through Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. At only 33 miles (53 km) in length, Idaho's Highway 200 is the shortest in the chain while Montana's Highway 200 is the longest. There is another highway called SR 20 in Washington that would complete the chain of Hwy 200s, but ID-200 is no longer directly connected to WA-20.[citation needed]
History
SH-200 was originally part of the National Parks Highway, a national auto trail created in the early 20th century to connect various national parks.[4] In the 1930s, it was designated as State Highway 3, corresponding with the Montana highway's number.[5] From 1941 to 1967, the route was signed as part of U.S. Route 10A.[6] After that highway's decommissioning, Idaho State Highway 200 was created in 1968 to replace it as part of a multi-state effort to renumber highways on the Spokane–Duluth corridor to the same number.[7] By 2007, the portion of Highway 200 west of the US 2/95 intersection had been terminated. Mileposts still display its pre-2007 length.
^Idaho Department of Highways; Rand McNally & Co. (1967). Official Highway Map of Idaho (Map). c. 1:1,425,600. Boise: Idaho Department of Highways. Retrieved October 28, 2020 – via Flickr.
