Here's a road sign I didn't think I'd ever see. For the most part, highway 1 was swallowed up by US highways, and there was no need to display both signs. When highway US70S was rebuilt as a two-lane divided highway from McMinnville to Sparta, TN, they left about a 1 mile segment of the Old 70S in Sparta with the Tennessee 1 designation. Here's a basic description of highway 1: The five-hundred-mile-long Memphis-to-Bristol Highway, although not originally an interstate route, tied in with other highways and functioned in much the same way. Local businessmen formed the Memphis to Bristol Highway Association in 1911 to promote its development. Soon after its creation in 1915, the Tennessee State Highway Department designated this corridor as State Route 1 and made it the top road priority. In 1926 the state designated about two-thirds of it as U.S. 70, the major east-west corridor in the region. In the late 1920s the entire route became part of the Broadway of America Highway from California to New York. State Route 1 remained the main east-west route through the state until the completion of Interstate 40 in the late 1960s.