The route was added to the state highway system in 1972 to provide access to Stapleton International Airport from I-70.

After the decommissioning of Stapleton Airport, the highway has been truncated from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to I-70.

Future plans from the 1970s indicate that the route would have run all the way from the intersection of Quebec Street and Hampden Avenue north to Interstate 80 South (now I‑76), southwest of Barr Lake, but construction never began, even though the project was still listed in transportation plans until the late 1990s.

[1] The route's southern end was at the Stapleton terminal access road from 1972 until 2000, when it was moved up to I‑70.

The northern end of the highway moved up to 53rd Place between 1995 and 1996, before the Stapleton redevelopment started in 2000.