It runs southwest-to-northeast between Cedarhurst connecting the Five Towns area to the Village of Hempstead – in addition to indirectly serving The Rockaways in Queens.

After Ocean Avenue, CR 2 runs as a four-lane expressway along the southeastern edge of Hempstead Lake State Park.

[4] The second of these frontage roads ends at Mercy Hospital on the southeast corner of the interchange with the current Southern State Parkway at Exit 19 in South Hempstead, where CR 2 reverts to a four-lane boulevard.

Beyond the Southern State Parkway, the road maintains its status as a divided highway even as it enters the Village of Hempstead, where it briefly turns east as it intersects Franklin, Greenwich, and Henry Streets.

[2][5] Its construction enabled better access between the Five Towns, the South Shore, and the Rockaway Peninsula with Hempstead and more northerly portions of the county.

[2][6] In 1958, Nassau County had finished construction on the widening of a 1.59-mile (2.56 km) segment of the highway in Hempstead, south to the Southern State Parkway.

[8][9] In mid-October 1952, Moses and the LISPC donated portions of the land along the route of the original parkway to Nassau County for the constriction of the route north to the Southern State Parkway, thus eliminating the need to widen North Village Avenue, which would instead remain a residential street and serve as a frontage road.