Kentucky

U.S. Route 68 is designated as a "Scenic Highway" throughout Kentucky. US 68 passes near or through Reidland, Aurora, Cadiz, Hopkinsville, Elkton, Russellville, Auburn, Bowling Green, Glasgow, Edmonton, Greensburg, Campbellsville, Lebanon, Perryville, Harrodsburg, Lexington, Paris, and Maysville.

The majority of the route winds through forested, hilly terrain. US 68 is Broadway through downtown Lexington, and it is Harrodsburg Road before it leaves Lexington.

The route passes several Civil War battle sites. The Jefferson Davis State Historic Site is located along the highway, approximately 9 miles (14 km) east of Hopkinsville at the small town of Fairview. The Battle of Tebbs Bend Historic Civil War Site is located near Campbellsville and the Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site is outside Perryville.

There is an annual 400-mile (640 km) yard sale, held along the highway for four days in early summer.^[1]

The sections of the highway through Campbellsville and Lebanon are slated for expansion to begin in 2008. The long-term goal is to widen and make safer the entire US 68 corridor through Kentucky as part of the Heartland Parkway project.^[2][3]

Sections in Kentucky have been improved in recent years. The Paris Pike was completed in 2003. Work is currently in progress to make US 68 four lanes through Land Between the Lakes. This was accelerated, following a devastating collision of the cargo vessel MV Delta Mariner with Eggner Ferry Bridge in January 2012.^{[needs update?]}

Ohio

US 68 takes a south–north route throughout Ohio, roughly paralleling Interstate 75 but covering counties one tier to the east of those counties covered by I-75. US 68 begins at the William H. Harsha Bridge over the Ohio River and duplexes with U.S. Route 52 for 5.6 miles while traveling on the north bank of the river. The highways separate at Ripley, at which point US 68 heads north as a generally rural two-lane highway, passing through or bypassing communities such as Georgetown, Mount Orab, Fayetteville, Wilmington, Xenia, and Yellow Springs. Shortly before reaching Interstate 70, it becomes a four-lane expressway, bypassing Springfield before transitioning back to a rural two-lane road as it approaches Urbana. As it continues north, US 68 passes through West Liberty, Bellefontaine, Kenton, Dunkirk, and Arlington on its way north to its terminus at an interchange with Interstate 75 outside Findlay.

In total, US 68 traverses 179.1 miles within Ohio.

Original route in central Kentucky

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From 1926 until the late 1940s, in terms of the routing between Bowling Green and Perryville, US 68's concurrency with US 31W went further northeast through southeastern Edmonson and northwestern Barren counties to Horse Cave, in Hart County. US 68 then followed the present-day Kentucky Route 218 (Charlie Moran Highway) to the US 31E junction at Wigwam, and then joined US 31E northward through LaRue and Nelson counties to Bardstown, where it joined US 150 for a concurrency that lasted through Washington County until it went solo in Perryville.^[4][5] US 68 moved to its current routing between Bowling Green and Perryville (except for the later rerouting onto Glasgow's Veterans Outer Loop) around 1948–49.

Original alignment in northwestern Ohio

US 68 previously ran to Toledo, Ohio, terminating at the west approach to the Anthony Wayne Bridge south of downtown, but the Toledo-Findlay segment was decommissioned in the 1950s.^[6] It also passed through Springfield, Ohio prior to its realignment onto a four-lane bypass of that city.

Widening project in western Kentucky (1990s)

For much of the 1990s, much of the US 68/KY 80 corridor from the I-24 junction near Cadiz to the Natcher Parkway (now I-165) junction in Bowling Green was under construction for a regional construction project to widen the corridor to four lanes, with several alignments remaining intact, especially around small towns such as Fairview and Auburn. The project included bypass routes in Hopkinsville and Russellville.^[7][8][9]

Eggner Ferry Bridge incident (2012)

Two spans of the US 68/KY 80 Eggner Ferry Bridge over Kentucky Lake collapsed after being struck by a cargo ship on January 26, 2012.^[10] The bridge reopened to traffic on May 25, 2012.^[11] That bridge was replaced by a new four-lane bridge a few years afterwards.