New State Highway 20 opens

Yahoo

22-04-2025

The new State Highway 20 opened on Good Friday in Claremore, but City Manager John Feary considered it better than "good."
"What a glorious day," Feary said to the crowd of about 100 people who had gathered that afternoon on the new overpass over State Highway 66.
They had come to watch the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and Oklahoma Turnpike Authority cut the ribbon on S.H. 20, opening up a more direct route between Claremore and Owasso than the old alignment granted.
ODOT, OTA and local government officials cut a long, green ribbon stamped with "SH-20/Flint Road" around 2:30 p.m.; the first drivers began using the new route about an hour later.
"It certainly is a great day today," Feary said. "The city of Claremore has looked forward to an overpass for many, many years, and while it's a little south of town, it will absolve a lot of the issues that we've had. We're very grateful today."
Tim Gatz, executive director of ODOT, said that Friday was decades in the making. Gatz said the $64 million project, jointly funded by ODOT and OTA, is an investment in Oklahoma's future.
Gatz said the new five-lane stretch of S.H. 20 will keep drivers safer than the two-lane, shoulderless Old Highway 20.
"I've been with the Department of Transportation for 35 years," Gatz said. "I have a clear recollection of what Highway 20 was like between Owasso and Claremore a couple of decades ago: the highest fatality corridor in the state. ... We have come a long ways."
Gatz said a little construction on the new route still remains; contractors will soon install a black vinyl fence along the bridge over S.H. 66. He said this will require temporary lane closures on the bridge.
Big "Route 66" shields emblazon the bridge's sides. District 3 Commissioner Ron Burrows, whose district encompasses the overpass, said he's proud of how the bridge looks. It's a fitting gateway into Claremore, he said.
Debbie Long, mayor of Claremore, said new Highway 20 will promote growth in south Claremore by giving drivers easier access. The alignment avoids downtown and ferries drivers directly to S.H. 66 and the Will Rogers Turnpike, via the interchange OTA opened in March.
Long said she was glad ODOT has committed to resurfacing parts of Holly Road and Will Rogers and Lynn Riggs boulevards before it hands maintenance responsibilities over these roads back to the city.
"Understand that this is our tax dollars at work for the betterment of Claremore," Long said.
A couple of curious Rogers County residents came to see the new road open; Shelley Ramsey and her grandson, Hunter, were two of them. Ramsey said she's lived in Claremore since 1984 and has commuted nearly all that time to Ascension St. John Medical Center in Tulsa.
Ramsey, who lives in a neighborhood near Walmart, said the Flint Road turnpike exit has cut a few minutes off her commute each day since it opened last month.
She also often shops in Owasso and has long used Country Club Road and Old Highway 20 to get there. She expected the new route would shorten that trip by 10 minutes.
"I've been watching it come along for years," Ramsey said. "... You always think about all the promises that you think government makes that are empty, but it came. It took a long time, but it came."