U.S. Route 60 is a major east–west United States highway, traveling 2,655 miles (4,273 km) from southwestern Arizona to the Atlantic Ocean coast in Virginia.

The road makes an arc through Catron County, with the apex at Quemado, avoiding Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and Escondido Mountain.

Curving back towards the east, the road enters Fort Sumner, the county seat, 21 mi (34 km) later.

[4] Just west of town, it serves as the northern terminus of NM-20, and in Fort Sumner proper, it begins a concurrency with US-84, which will persist for the remainder of the routes' miles in New Mexico.

East of town the two highways encounter NM-212, a spur to Fort Sumner State Monument, and NM 252 in Taiban.

For the distance of more than 300 miles (480 km) between Abo Pass and Amarillo, the highway parallels the Southern Transcon, one of the busiest transcontinental railroads in the west.

It enters the state as a four-lane divided highway at Farwell on the Texas-New Mexico border, and heads northeast, intersecting U.S. Route 385 at Hereford.

Except for three short sections near Enid, Vinita, and Ponca City, US 60 is a two-lane highway its entire length across Oklahoma.

It enters the state 14 mi (23 km) west of Arnett and travels east to Orienta where it begins a concurrency with U.S. Highway 412.

At Republic, the road becomes a four-lane divided highway, turning southeast onto the James River Freeway in the Springfield city limits.

On July 9, 2010, The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) finished the process of upgrading US 60 to four lanes along a 59-mile (95 km) segment between the towns of Willow Springs and Van Buren.

A stretch of US 60 from east of US 65 in Springfield to Rogersville has been in long range plans on being upgraded to freeway status, therefore removing all at-grade crossings, installing overpasses and interchanges, and access roads.

The concurrent routes pass Fort Defiance, which lies at the lowest and southernmost point of Illinois, then intersect with U.S. 51 south of Cairo, turning eastward along with southbound U.S. 51 to cross the Ohio River into Kentucky.

The routes continue to Catlettsburg, where US 60 leaves US 23 and heads east, crossing over the Big Sandy River on the Billy C. Clark Bridge into the state of West Virginia.

with a U.S. 60 shield and a "to I-64 (east or west)" sign in order to assure travelers they would eventually return to the interstate highway by following the federal designated route.

From Sam Black Church east through Lewisburg to White Sulphur Springs, US 60 lives in the shadow of I-64 and carries a very small amount of traffic.

Just east of White Sulphur Springs, US 60 joins I-64 for the last 2 miles (3.2 km) in the state before they enter Virginia at Allegheny Mountain.

In Virginia, U.S. Route 60 runs 312 mi (502 km) west to east through the central part of the state, generally close to and paralleling the Interstate 64 corridor, except for the crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in the South Hampton Roads area.

Between Lexington in the Shenandoah Valley and Richmond, I-64 uses a lower elevation crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains located about 30 miles (48 km) further north, where it runs parallel to U.S. Route 250 through Rockfish Gap.

With the crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains at a higher altitude in more rugged terrain, US 60 in this area offers much more challenging and weather-sensitive driving conditions, as well as a history of many crashes in the years before I-64 was completed.

East of north–south U.S. Route 29 (which runs parallel to the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge), the older US 60 and I-64 gradually converge as they pass through the rolling hills of the rocky Piedmont region in an easterly direction to reach the Fall Line at Richmond, where they again become very close.

Along the way in Newport News, a notable section of Huntington Avenue (the block between 25th and 26th streets) carries US 60 in both directions overlapping, and is possibly the only example of a highway in the United States with such a configuration.

The final portion of Route 62 crossed southern Missouri to Springfield on an existing main highway that had been numbered 16 by the state.

Proposals were considered for splitting US 60 into 60N and 60E at Springfield (MO) or using 62 for the Chicago route; Missouri had already prepared maps that showed the original plans for 60 and 62.

[14][2][15] Although US 60 initially stretched less than halfway across the country, due to its late creation, it was soon extended west to Los Angeles.

[10] The original alignment of U.S. Route 70 entered Clovis, New Mexico from the east, as it does now, but continued west to Holbrook, Arizona.

The remainder of US 70 to Holbrook, Arizona became a new U.S. Route 260, while US 60 followed the Atlantic and Pacific Highway, which it had picked up at Vaughn, New Mexico, southwest and west through Phoenix to Los Angeles.

US 70 was not truncated to Clovis, but was instead redirected southwest along US 366 to El Paso, and later reached Los Angeles itself, though most of the route west of Globe, Arizona overlapped US 60.

I-10 and I-64 were mostly completed by the late 1970s,[20] though part of Interstate 64 in West Virginia, built on a new alignment east from Beckley, did not bypass the old winding US 60 until July 15, 1988.

[21] California decommissioned its portion of US 60 in 1972; most was replaced by I-10, while the independent piece in the Los Angeles area became State Route 60.