Frankenstein’s Highway: How Myrtle Beach is still trying to will I-73 into existence
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Frankenstein’s Highway
Interstate 73, the fabled Michigan-to-Myrtle Beach superhighway, has been in the works for more than 40 years. In this latest investigative series by The Sun News, J. Dale Shoemaker takes a deep-dive into the origins of the project, why it’s taken so long to complete and what the road could mean for South Carolina.
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Frankenstein’s Highway: How Myrtle Beach is still trying to will I-73 into existence
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Ashby Ward will never get to drive on Interstate 73, assuming it ever gets built.
Bringing the Michigan-to-Myrtle Beach highway to life was one of his “passions,” his children said. The former Myrtle Beach chamber chief worked on the project for more than a decade before his untimely death in 2003.
That doesn’t mean that Ward’s I-73 dream doesn’t live on.
But without Ward at the helm, I-73 entered an era of publicity stunts, with local politicians increasingly desperate to make the road — their economic savior — a reality.
Rather than Washington quarterbacking the highway project, I-73 was left up to the states. Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina have born the responsibility to determine the route, win funding and actually get the road built.
That alone was a major departure from past interstate projects, and Myrtle Beach would ultimately take the reins.
Publicity stunts and an uncertain future
Just before he passed away, Ward celebrated I-73’s future. Congress had allocated $3 million for an I-73 feasibility study, which led former U.S. Rep. Henry Brown to push for $1 billion to later construct the highway.
In May 2003, a month after Ward’s death, I-73 boosters brought U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers — Kentucky’s “prince of pork” — to town for dinner and a round of golf at ‘The Granddaddy’. They hoped winning the favor of the congressman would bring funding for I-73.
The wining and dining of the powerful lawmaker on the House Appropriations Committee appeared to work, and Rogers left town praising the project’s importance.
But I-73 was on life support.
In 2001, Michigan and Ohio pulled out of the project. That same year, South Carolina officials stressed they had no money for it.
West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina had all gone their own way with the project.
During the summer of 2003, I-73’s boosters begged Rep. Tom Petri, who then chaired the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee, to come to town.
Petri was a tougher sell, and he ultimately chose to visit Charleston instead of Myrtle Beach.
Desperate, a Sunway bus full of Myrtle Beach supporters sped down U.S. 17 to greet him.
“I-73 or bust,” read a banner wrapped around the bus, The Sun News reported in July 2003.
In February 2004, 100 backers, including North Myrtle Beach Mayor Marilyn Hatley, chartered a Hooters Air flight (previously a branch of the restaurant) to Washington, D.C. to continue lobbying.
The effort paid off when Congress allocated $80 million to I-73 that April.
“It’s time to haul asphalt,” County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland said at the time.
Except it wasn’t.
Rather, South Carolina politicians like Sen. Lindsey Graham framed the project as a competition against the other states.
“If we do not designate the route sooner rather than later, we could lose this road to North Carolina,” Graham said in 2004.
Even with the money I-73 had won, the South Carolina Department of Transportation said it would be 13 years, minimum, before I-73 was drivable. The allocations to I-73 have been used for planning, permitting and land-buying, not construction.
Horry County did construct and open S.C. 22, which is supposed to be part of I-73, but the highway doesn’t meet interstate standards and currently only connects U.S. 17 to U.S. 501.
S.C. 22 also floods, badly, during major storms.
Over the next several years, SCDOT would begin using the funding for I-73 to plan its eventual route, Myrtle Beach would take over I-73 planning from West Virginia, and George W. Bush’s transportation secretary got on board with the project.
But none of that was enough.
Neither federal nor state funding was forthcoming. Since then, the project has languished.
The project would win several million dollars in funding here or there, but nowhere near enough to make significant progress on a projected $1.6 billion bill. To this day, SCDOT has only received $117 million to work on I-73, just 7% of its total estimated cost, according to an agency document.
And that funding only came after additional lobbying trips to Washington, boosted by lobbyists on SCDOT’s payroll. South Carolina even considered adding tolls to I-73 to show federal leaders they were “serious.”
A review of newspaper archives showed Myrtle Beach leaders made at least a half-dozen lobbying trips to Washington, D.C. for I-73 over the past two decades.
The project isn’t dead, but one could hardly say it’s alive and well.
I-73 continues to lurch forward clumsily, much like Frankenstein’s monster, searching for acceptance among residents and politicians.
A crucial time for I-73
As a cast of leaders have lobbied for I-73, they’ve had to contend with public pushback.
In South Carolina, that opposition began in earnest during the early 2000s, as officials began planning the route for its leg of I-73.
One store owner in the Aynor area told The Sun News in 2005 that I-73 would either destroy their business, or boost it immensely.
“The road will either kill us or help us,” Meryl Vaught said.
In 2011, the Sierra Club — an environmental protection organization — questioned the merits of the project and rallied its members to oppose it.
The next year, local leaders — including the current head of the county’s Solid Waste Authority board — began writing op-eds opposing it.
Even a former SCDOT commissioner raised suspicions.
“And why is I-73 REALLY being pushed?” asked Sarah Nuckles in a 2012 letter to The Sun News. “Is there another reason that is not readily visible to the taxpayers?”
That opposition forced the chamber to play defense and has divided Myrtle Beach as state lawmakers debate funding I-73. Some residents and politicians love the idea. Others lambaste it as a waste of money every chance they get.
The opposition has also turned North Myrtle Beach’s state Rep. William Bailey against the project. Bailey said he only supports I-73 if the federal government pays for it. And County Council member Harold Worley, from the same area, took time out of a recent meeting to criticize the chamber over an I-73 mailer it had sent out.
Still, I-73 has powered forward.
By 2013, U.S. Rep. Tom Rice had moved from chairman of Horry County Council to Congress. He quickly joined the House transportation committee and began agitating in Washington to get the road built.
Rice has repeatedly said that he made securing environmental permits and funds for I-73 one of his top priorities. He and his staff scheduled regular check-in meetings with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to track the progress on awarding permits.
By 2017, Rice’s nagging of the Army Corps paid off, and permits for I-73 were issued.
It came with a price, though: 6,000 acres of Gunter’s Island had to be conserved by the state.
The Coastal Conservation League wasn’t satisfied with that purchase and felt I-73 would damage too many wetlands. It soon took the Corps in court to challenge the permits. They argued SCDOT ignored better routes that harmed fewer wetlands.
And the project stalled again.
A federal judge ruled against the league in September 2021, allowing the project to move forward.
McMaster then announced he wanted to put $300 million toward construction, funded partly by COVID-19 money, the largest allocation to the project to date.
It’s now up to the legislature this spring to OK that funding.
That makes it a crucial time for I-73. Meanwhile, local opposition isn’t going anywhere.
In a November interview after Congress passed President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package, Rice said there’s likely I-73 funding in the new law.
Rice, who’s facing a difficult re-election bid this year, remains one of the project’s biggest champions. He’s bullish, thanks to McMaster’s pledge.
“I think we’re going to be turning dirt within a year,” he said in February. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been.”
Rice also said he views 2022 as a crucial year.
“Once we start building it, we’re not going to stop,” Rice said. “This road is going to get built. The question is when.”
Stay tuned for parts three and four of this series which will publish tomorrow, Friday, April 8. Those stories will detail I-73’s economic impact to South Carolina, and reveal data on right-of-way land sales for the highway.
How we reported this story: Over the course of six months, The Sun News interviewed more than two dozen people knowledgeable about I-73, its history and the U.S. interstate highway system. They included current and former members of Congress, current and former South Carolina and Horry County officials, area business leaders and others. The Sun News also reviewed legal documents and data from the South Carolina Department of Transportation, and conducted an extensive review of newspaper archives spanning three decades. Contemporaneous reporting from The Columbus Dispatch, The Roanoke Times, The Post & Courier, The Associated Press and The Sun News, among other outlets, from 1991 through 2019 was included in that review. Those sources, woven together, create the most comprehensive history of South Carolina’s newest interstate highway to date.
J. Dale Shoemaker researched, reported and wrote this project. Charles “Steve” Austin and David Weissman edited the project. Jason Lee captured original photos and videos and Gabby McCall created the graphics. Loumay Alesali produced this project’s videos.
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Frankenstein’s Highway: How Myrtle Beach is still trying to will I-73 into existence."
