Early turnpikes Many of the roads leading from Boston to the surrounding towns were first laid out as privately owned and operated
turnpikes at the beginning of the 19th century. One of the roads used by modern Route 28 leading from the northern suburbs of Boston in the direction of
Manchester, New Hampshire was the
Andover and Medford Turnpike. The turnpike corporation was chartered in June 1805 and had authority to build from the marketplace in Medford to a point in the town of Andover. A committee of Middlesex County freeholders established the location of the road in 1806, and the road was constructed soon after at a cost of almost $49,000 for a length of about six miles, being built only as far north as the Reading-Stoneham town line, where a branch of the
Essex Turnpike continued the road to Andover and the state of New Hampshire. An act by the General Court in February 1807 allowed the Andover and Medford company to maintain a toll gate at the Essex-Middlesex county line jointly with the Essex Turnpike corporation. The road continued collecting tolls until January 1836 when Middlesex county commissioners declared the road a public road and awarded the company $3,000 as compensation. In March 1804, another turnpike corporation, the
Blue Hill Turnpike Corporation, was chartered with authority to lay out an improved road from the meeting house in the town of Randolph, through the Blue Hills Reservation, to a point in the town of Milton. A second act in June 1805 allowed for a slight alteration in the terminus in Milton. The road cost approximately $78,300 to build the eight miles from Randolph Center to Milton Lower Mills in 1805. The turnpike used what is now North Main Street in Randolph and Randolph Avenue in Milton. The road from Milton Lower Mills into Boston was continued by the
Dorchester Turnpike. In 1815, the Blue Hills Turnpike company was allowed to impose a fine on any persons who tried to avoid paying the tolls. The turnpike was discontinued in 1848, when the Norfolk county commissioners declared the road as a public highway. The company reported an average net income of 1-2 per cent per year during its existence. Two other sections of modern Route 28 were also parts of early turnpikes. The section between Middleborough and Bridgewater, where Route 28 overlaps with Route 18, was part of the
New Bedford and Bridgewater Turnpike. The portion along Blue Hill Avenue, between the village of Mattapan and Franklin Park Zoo, was the northern half of the
Brush Hill Turnpike (the lower half is modern Route 138). In Cape Cod, most travel was by water and roads were not improved until late in the 19th century.
Route numbering and original alignment In 1922, the
New England states adopted a region-wide
road marking system. Primary routes were to be assigned route numbers between 1 and 99 and marked as black numerals on yellow bands painted on poles along the route. The route running from
Wareham, Massachusetts and
Ossipee, New Hampshire via
Boston and
Manchester, New Hampshire was designated as
New England Route 28. Route 28 utilized the main road between Wareham and Middleborough (Wareham Street), from which it then traveled along Everett Street and Summer Street until the center of Bridgewater. From Bridgewater, Route 28 used the main road to Brockton (Main Street). In Brockton, Route 28 shifted slightly west to use Warren Avenue (between Clifton and Pleasant streets) and North Main Street (to the town of Avon). From Randolph, it then went along the alignment of the old Blue Hill Turnpike but left the turnpike alignment before reaching Milton Village, shifting westward to a section of the Brush Hill Turnpike (Blue Hill Avenue) in Mattapan. In Mattapan, it joined with
New England Route 6 (modern
Route 203) and went west along Morton Street and the
Arborway until they met with
New England Route 1 at Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. The triple-concurrency of Routes 1, 6, and 28 continued through the
Emerald Necklace following the
Jamaicaway, the
Riverway, and a short section of
Boylston Street to Charlesgate, and then crossed the Charles River using the
Harvard Bridge. After crossing the river, Route 6 split off to the west along
Memorial Drive, while Routes 1 and 28 followed local streets in Cambridge and Somerville (Windsor Avenue, Webster Avenue, Walnut Street) to reach the
Fellsway. The two routes crossed the Mystic River on the Fellsway and split at the intersection with the Revere Beach Parkway. From there, Route 28 continued along the Fellsway towards Medford Center. North of Medford, Route 28 utilized the alignment of the old Andover and Medford Turnpike through the Middlesex Fells Reservation into Reading. It then continued on the Andover branch of the old Essex Turnpike through Andover and Lawrence to the New Hampshire state line. The route on Cape Cod was also assigned in 1922 as a primary New England route. The road from Bourne to Orleans along the south shore of the Cape was the easternmost section of
New England Route 3.Th At the end of 1926, the
U.S. Highway system was established and several of the primary New England routes were redesignated as U.S. routes. New England Route 28 was not renumbered but New England Route 1 became U.S. Route 1; New England Route 6 became
U.S. Route 3 north of Boston and mostly
State Route 3 south of Boston; and New England Route 3 became mostly U.S. Route 6. In Cape Cod, however, this was not the case. Former New England Route 3 was assigned as a southern extension of Route 28, while former New England Route 6 was assigned as an eastern extension of U.S. Route 6.
Realignments Driving the entire length from
New Hampshire to
Orleans, the highway layout and design has not changed much since its construction and designation in the early 20th century. The major exceptions are in
Boston, where some of the original routing was changed over the years, and on the Cape, where a
freeway section between
Falmouth and
Bourne was completed in the mid-1960s. In 1928, several projects to relieve congestion in the Boston area were completed. One of these was the opening of the
Boston University Bridge (at the time known as Cottage Farm Bridge). The opening of this new bridge over the Charles River resulted in the relocation of the triple concurrency of US 1, US 3, and Route 28 onto it. The routes left the Riverway using Park Drive and Mountfort Street (both now designated as part of
Route 2) to reach the bridge. In Cambridge and Somerville, a new boulevard known as the
Northern Artery was built over part of Somerville Avenue and Medford Street, continuing north on a new roadway cutting across Somerville to Fellsway East, which was also paved over by the new Northern Artery. The Northern Artery provided a high speed connection between the Charles River and the Mystic River. US 1 and Route 28 were relocated off of local streets in Cambridge and Somerville onto the Northern Artery when it opened to traffic. From the Boston University Bridge, the two routes used Memorial Drive and Cambridge Parkway to reach the Northern Artery. The Northern Artery was later renamed as the Monsignor O'Brien Highway in Cambridge and the McGrath Highway in Somerville. In the mid-1930s, the city of Boston marked several alternate routes of Routes 1, 9, 28, and 37 that ran through the downtown area. Route C28 left mainline Route 28 by continuing north into Dorchester along Blue Hill Avenue instead of turning west onto Morton Street with Route 3. Just beyond the Franklin Zoo, C28 turned west along Seaver Street, continuing through Roxbury along Columbus Avenue. C28 then followed Columbus Avenue up to Charles Street at the Boston Common, turning north along Charles Street to Cambridge Street, then crossing the Charles River using the
Longfellow Bridge. C28 met back with mainline Route 28 at Memorial Drive in Cambridge. In 1971, the Boston 'C' routes were retired and mainline Route 28 was relocated onto the former C28 alignment through downtown Boston. Route 28 was also later shifted to use its modern alignment along Embankment Road and the Charles River Dam Bridge. The McCarthy Overpass, which carries Route 28 as McGrath Highway through part of Somerville, was built in the early 1950s, before Interstate 93. The parallel Northern Expressway segment connecting Medford (where I-93 ended in 1963) and the
Central Artery was constructed between 1965 and 1973. As the McCarthy Overpass reached the end of its expected life, the
Massachusetts Department of Transportation announced in 2013 the preferred replacement was a ground-level boulevard. The project is expected to cost $100 million and is programmed with state and federal money for 2027-2030; as of 2024, work on producing the 25% design was underway. Temporary repairs were made in the meantime to protect the structural integrity of the bridge. The southbound off-ramp to Somerville Avenue, and a northbound "tunnel" under the overpass north of Somerville Avenue, were closed on April 11, 2016. In 1935, a new bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, the Bourne Bridge, was opened to traffic, replacing an earlier drawbridge at the same location. Between 1941 and 1943, the road south of the Bourne Bridge was widened to a four-lane, divided highway to the Pocasset Rotary and renamed General MacArthur Boulevard. The Route 28 expressway in Falmouth opened to traffic in 1961. Route 28 was relocated to the new expressway soon after, with the former surface alignment being renumbered to Route 28A. Around 1940, several minor realignments had also taken place in Brockton, Bridgewater, and Middleborough. In Brockton, Route 28 followed Montello Street instead of Warren Avenue. South of Bridgewater, Route 28 was relocated onto an overlap with Route 18 until West Grove Street. Route 28 then followed West Grove Street and East Grove Street, bypassing Middleborough Center to the south. By 1951, a new bypass road in Buzzards Bay was completed and resulted in the relocation of Routes 6 and 28 to the new roadway. Route 28 itself is no longer utilized as a long distance through route because of the opening of several parallel expressways along the Route 28 corridor since the 1950s.
Interstate 93 serves the Route 28 corridor north of Boston, while the combination of
Route 24, the southern end of
Interstate 495, and
Route 25 serves the corridor south of Boston to the
Bourne Bridge. The construction of Route 25, in particular, resulted in a reconfiguration of the connection from the Bourne Corners traffic circle to the Route 25 expressway. ==Major intersections==