Take a cruise across the skyline of downtown Dallas as we follow the Woodall Rodgers Freeway—Texas Highway 366—westbound from US-75 to Interstate 35E. Though this short 1.5-mile stretch serves a purely urban purpose, it’s one of the city’s most significant connectors, linking Uptown and East Dallas to the Design District, Victory Park, and beyond. Wedged between concrete, steel, and the skyline, TX-366 is a freeway unlike any other—often buried, occasionally bridged, and never boring.
Our journey begins at the interchange with Central Expressway (US-75), where TX-366 quickly plunges below grade. As we head west, the highway briefly enters a short tunnel beneath Klyde Warren Park—a nationally recognized cap park that quite literally knits the city back together. The freeway disappears from view for a moment, hidden beneath carefully manicured lawns, food trucks, walking paths, and shaded benches. Above us, the street grid and park users go about their day oblivious to the thousands of vehicles passing below. This innovative use of air rights has turned a once-divisive freeway trench into a unifying civic landmark.
Emerging from beneath the park, we find ourselves coursing through the heart of the Dallas Arts District, although the highway remains partially recessed below street level, offering little more than glimpses of side streets and high-rise retaining walls. To the south stands Museum Tower and other pillars of the city’s cultural and commercial landscape, but the freeway’s below-grade profile means we mostly admire these icons from the edges. Overpasses at Pearl, Olive, and Field streets carry cross traffic while we continue westward, cocooned in concrete.
Approaching Victory Park, the corridor opens slightly as TX-366 begins to climb. The skyline now looms to our left, offering views of Fountain Place, Bank of America Plaza, and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, depending on your vantage point. This portion of the freeway serves as a vital link to the American Airlines Center and the transit-oriented development surrounding Victory Station. Finally, the freeway merges seamlessly into Interstate 35E, known here as the Stemmons Freeway, which carries traffic north toward Denton or south into the Design District, Oak Lawn, and southern Dallas.
Though brief, this drive is a microcosm of Dallas infrastructure: ambitious, dense, and always in flux. The Woodall Rodgers Freeway is more than a spur—it’s a lifeline that connects some of the city’s most important neighborhoods and cultural assets, all while hiding in plain sight beneath streets, skyscrapers, and even parks.
🎵 Music:
Piano March by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
🗺️ Route Map
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