Freeport Diversion

Highway 8
Route information
Existed:	1920 – present
Major junctions
West end:	Highway 21 – Goderich
	Highway 7 – Stratford  Highway 85 – Kitchener  Highway 401 – Cambridge
East end:	Highway 5 (near Dundas)
Location
Major cities:	Stratford, Kitchener, Cambridge, Hamilton
Towns:	Goderich, Clinton
Highway system
Ontario provincial highways List 400-series Former Current highways ← Highway 7A   Highway 9  → Former highways ← Highway 7B   Highway 8A →

King's Highway 8, commonly referred to as Highway 8, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. At a length of 159.7 kilometres (99.2 mi), the route is significantly shorter than when it travelled beyond Hamilton to Niagara Falls. However, the Queen Elizabeth Way replaced the role of Highway 8 between those two cities, and that portion of the highway was subsequently transferred from provincial to local jurisdiction. Today the highway connects Hamilton and Cambridge, thereafter continuing through Southwestern Ontario to the community of Goderich on the shores of Lake Huron.

Until 1918, the majority of the primary roads through southern Ontario formed part of the County Road System. The Department of Public Works and Highways paid up to 60% of the construction and maintenance costs for these roads, while the counties were responsible for the remaining 40%. In 1919, the federal government passed the Canada Highways Act, which provided $20,000,000 to provinces under the condition that they establish an official highway network; up to 40% of construction costs would be subsidized. The first network plan was approved on February 26, 1920, and included the Queenston Road. The majority of what would soon become Highway 8 was assumed by the department over the course of the year. However, it would not receive a route number until the summer of 1925.

Up until the early 1970s, the highway was much longer than its current length, extending from Goderich through Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, and Hamilton to Niagara Falls. However, in 1970, the Government of Ontario decided that the stretch of Highway 8 between Winona (just east of Hamilton) and Niagara Falls was no longer of major transportation significance, since by this time most traffic used the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), just to the north, to go between the two locales. Accordingly, the province downloaded this section of the highway to the newly formed Regional Municipality of Niagara, which designated the road as Regional Road 81. In 1998, the provincial government of Mike Harris carried another downloading of the highway to municipal authorities; this time the section between the town of Peters Corners (near Dundas) and Winona was transferred to the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth.

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Wikipedia