Interstate 55 (I-55) is part of the Interstate Highway System that runs from LaPlace, Louisiana, to Chicago, Illinois. In the state of Tennessee, the Interstate is located entirely within the state's second-largest city of Memphis, running from the Mississippi state line in the Whitehaven neighborhood to the Arkansas border across the Mississippi River. Of the six states that the Interstate passes through, the segment in Tennessee is the shortest, as well as the shortest mainline Interstate segment in Tennessee. I-55 serves a number of neighborhoods and industrial areas in the southwestern portion of Memphis, and also provides access to the Memphis International Airport, the second-busiest cargo airport in the world.
I-55 is known as the Bishop J. O. Patterson Sr. Memorial Parkway and the W.B. Fowler Sr. Expressway in Tennessee. The Interstate utilizes the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge across the Mississippi River. Completed in 1949, this is the oldest bridge on the Interstate Highway System in Tennessee and the oldest bridge on I-55. The remainder of the route was constructed between 1958 and 1967, making it the first mainline Interstate Highway in Tennessee to be completed. The route also had an auxiliary Interstate, I-255, which was renumbered as an extension of I-240 in 1973. Since its construction, the Interstate has seen a number of expansion and improvement projects, with additional ones planned for the future.
Route description
I-55 is maintained by the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), along with all other Interstate, U.S., and state highways in Tennessee. In 2025, annual average daily traffic (AADT) volumes ranged from 110,615 vehicles per day between U.S. Route 51 (US 51) and I-240 and 36,764 vehicles per day at the Arkansas state line.
I-55 enters Tennessee from Southaven, Mississippi, in the Whitehaven neighborhood of southwestern Memphis, with the northern ramps from the northernmost Mississippi exit extending into Tennessee. Traveling in a direct north-south alignment, this stretch of the freeway carries eight lanes, with the leftmost lanes serving as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes during rush hour. The first interchange is with State Route 175 (SR 175, Shelby Drive). The Interstate then passes west of the Memphis International Airport, the second-busiest cargo airport in the world, and shifts to the northwest, where the northbound Tennessee Welcome Center is located. A short distance later is a complex interchange with Brooks Road and US 51 (Elvis Presley Boulevard) near Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley. Gradually turning north, the HOV restrictions terminate and the Interstate crosses Nonconnah Creek before reaching a two-level cloverstack interchange with Interstate 240. Here, a pair of ramps carry I-55's traffic through the interchange into an east-west alignment, and I-240 shifts from a north-south alignment heading from Downtown and Midtown Memphis to an east-west direction through the southern neighborhoods of the city.
Carrying between four and six lanes for its remaining length in Tennessee, I-55 first crosses a series of railroads serving an industrial area to the north, and has a three-level cloverstack interchange with US 61 (Third Street). Passing to the north of a levee, the freeway then gradually turns to the north, where it crosses another railroad before reaching a single-point urban interchange (SPUI) with Mallory Avenue adjacent to an oil refinery operated by Valero Energy. Passing west of the Riverside neighborhood, the Interstate has an interchange with South Parkway, part of the historic Memphis Parkway System before reaching an interchange with McLemore Avenue near the eastern end of the President's Island peninsula on the Mississippi River and crossing another railroad. Traveling northeastward for a brief distance, the Interstate reaches a complex interchange with US 61/64/70/78/79 (Crump Boulevard) and Riverside Drive, where it begins a concurrency with these U.S. routes. Here, the freeway turns directly westward, with a pair of flyover bridges carrying I-55 traffic through the interchange, and the ramps connect to the surface streets via a large roundabout. The freeway then turns slightly northwest and crosses the Mississippi River on the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, where it enters Arkansas.
History Predecessor highways and bridges In the 19th century a number of trails connected Memphis with surrounding areas. In 1915, the Tennessee Department of Highways and Public Works, the predecessor agency to TDOT, was established, and tasked with designating a state highway system. That year, they designated the Memphis to Bristol Highway, which ran approximately from Memphis to Bristol in the northeastern corner of the state. On October 1, 1923, the highway department established the state's numbered highway system. The Memphis to Bristol Highway was designated as State Route 1 (SR 1); the road between Memphis and Vicksburg, Mississippi, was designated as part of SR 14; the main road connecting Memphis with Jackson, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana, was designated as SR 3; and the road running southeast of Memphis to Birmingham, Alabama, was established as SR 4. When the United States Numbered Highway System was established on November 11, 1926, these routes were designated as U.S. Routes 70, 61, 51, and 78, respectively.
The Frisco Bridge was the first bridge across the Mississippi River to be constructed in Memphis, as well as the first crossing of the Lower Mississippi River. Completed in 1892, this bridge carried a single track of the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis Railway, which was later acquired by the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway. The Frisco bridge was joined by the Harahan Bridge in 1916, a double-track bridge which was jointly constructed by the Rock Island, Iron Mountain, and Cotton Belt railroads. This bridge contained a series of wagonways that opened the following year and carried automobile traffic. By the late 1920s, these wagonways had become congested, and the need for a new bridge exclusively carrying automobile traffic became apparent. Preliminary planning was delayed by the Great Depression, and did not begin until the creation of the joint Memphis and Arkansas Bridge committee on March 14, 1939. This committee was headed by then-Memphis mayor and political boss E. H. Crump, and included Congressman Walter Chandler and U.S. Senator Kenneth McKellar. The plans also included a new street leading up to the bridge bypassing both Downtown Memphis and historic African American neighborhoods to the south. This street became known as Crump Boulevard. Engineering firm Modjeski and Masters, who also helped design the Frisco and Harahan bridges, was hired on May 19, 1944, and construction of the bridge began on September 12, 1945. Work on Crump Boulevard began in September 1948. On December 17, 1949, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge and Crump Boulevard opened to traffic.
Interstate Highway planning and construction
The highway that is now I-55 had its origins in the late 1930s, when the federal government began planning for a national "superhighway" system. A 1939 report titled Toll Roads and Free Roads and published by the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), the predecessor agency to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), recommended a controlled-access highway connect Memphis with Jackson, Mississippi, to the south, and Chicago to the north. This routing was affirmed in the National Interregional Highway Committee's 1944 report, titled Interregional Highways. Three years later, a plan produced by the Public Roads Administration of the now-defunct Federal Works Agency recommended the freeway cross the Mississippi River in Memphis into Arkansas, and run through St. Louis before reaching Chicago. A plan for Memphis' freeway system produced in 1955 recommended that a north-south freeway enter the city in the Whitehaven community, and intersect with an east-west route in Midtown. A loop encircling the city was also planned, which would interchange with the north-south route directly north of Nonconnah Creek, and run along the riverfront, crossing Crump Boulevard and the east-west route, before crossing Mud Island and intersecting with the northern terminus of the north-south route. By July 1956, the freeway between Crump Boulevard and the north-south freeway north of town had been cancelled due to opposition from the Bureau of Public Roads, which resulted in the freeway being rerouted across the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge. This would result in the bridge becoming the oldest bridge on the Interstate Highway System in Tennessee. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 established the Interstate Highway System and allocated a total of of Interstate Highways to Tennessee, including the freeway that would become I-55. The numbering was approved by the American Association of State Highway Officials on August 14, 1957, for the north-south freeway between the Mississippi state line and the interchange adjacent to Nonconnah Creek, and the original loop route between this interchange and the Mississippi River.
The first segment of I-55 to begin construction after the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act was the interchange with I-240, along with a short stretch of that route east of the interchange. A contract for this project was awarded on July 25, 1958. The section between the Mississippi state line and US 51/Brooks Road was awarded in two smaller segments on June 26, 1959, and October 30, 1959, and was opened to traffic on December 2, 1961. This was the first completed freeway segment in Memphis. On December 15, 1962, the short section between US 51/Brooks Road and I-240, along with an adjacent section of I-240 to the east, was dedicated and opened to traffic. The section between I-240 and east of US 61 (Third Street) was let on February 16, 1962, and the adjacent section extending to Horn Lake Road was awarded on December 13, 1963. The section between Horn Lake Road and South Parkway was let on February 28, 1964. On March 18, 1966, the section between I-240 and US 61 was dedicated and opened. The section between US 61 and South Parkway was dedicated and opened on October 14, 1966. Work on the last section, located between South Parkway and the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge and which consisted of upgrading the reused stretch of Crump Boulevard between the bridge and the cloverleaf interchange to freeway standards, began on September 11, 1964, and was opened on April 20, 1967. I-55 was the first mainline Interstate Highway in Tennessee to be completed.
Later history
Crump Interchange reconstruction