Highway 40 is having another identity crisis.

Construction is to start later this month on the New I-64 project — the massive transformation of Highway 40 and its vintage interchanges.

New bridges will go up, and a lane will be added in each direction from Interstate 170 to Spoede Road. But one thing about Highway 40 will probably remain the same: No one can get its name straight.

For 20 years, side-by-side signs have called it both Interstate 64 and Highway 40, a combination that most St. Louisans have stubbornly ignored. Highway engineers prefer I-64. Most motorists say that for now, they're calling it Highway 40.

Maybe it's the sound of it.

"We're just all familiar with Highway 40," Crystal Bell, 37, a lifelong St. Louisan, said in an interview outside Schnucks on Clayton Road in Richmond Heights.

Highway 40 has had its share of growing pains. And it's had its share of names.

The first piece of the highway opened in 1936 as the Oakland Express Highway between Kingshighway and Skinker Boulevard. Built north of Oakland Avenue, it sliced off part of Forest Park — less costly and controversial than taking homes and businesses would have been. Two years later, the highway reached Chouteau Avenue.

The roadway was St. Louis' first "super highway." Wrecks were frequent. The speed limit was 45 mph, but the number of traffic crashes brought pressure to lower it. In World War II, the limit dropped to 35 mph to save rubber.

The next year, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen renamed the highway the Red Feather Expressway for a community charity drive. One alderman, Ray Weinbrenner, fought the change and tried to rename it after Gen. George Patton.

"I don't like the word 'red' anyway," he told aldermen.

The renaming debate was a lively one, according to news accounts. Weinbrenner proposed a different name, Easter Bunny Lane. His other suggestion: White Feather Highway "to indicate the attitude of this board on many issues." A white feather was a symbol of cowardice.

Red Feather Expressway won, and the name stuck. The Red Feather had its quirks. It closed each spring for cleaning. It also closed west of Hampton Avenue for the Soap Box Derby. Police shut it down in rain, snow and "heavy dew," as one magazine writer joked.

The highway grew wider, swallowed more of Forest Park and inched its way east to the Illinois line. It was the designated path for U.S. Route 40, which at that time shared pavement with dozens of city, county and state roads from Atlantic City, N.J., to San Francisco.

To drive west across St. Louis County, Route 40 drivers followed multiple paths. One way was driving the Red Feather to Clayton Road, which led to the Daniel Boone Expressway. That's the part of the current Highway 40 west of Brentwood. It too was built in pieces, starting in the 1930s.

The state fused the two in the late 1950s with a two-mile link between Brentwood Boulevard and Skinker. It was at that point that more St. Louisans started calling it Highway 40.

The Post-Dispatch stuck with the older names and didn't consistently call it Highway 40 until 1972.

In 1960, St. Louis aldermen renamed the section from Tamm Avenue to Sarah Street the David P. Wohl Highway. Wohl, a prominent philanthropist and shoe manufacturer, had died that year.

It was the last official name given to a section of Highway 40 until 1987, when the highway joined the interstate system as Interstate 64.

The Missouri Department of Transportation named the rebuilding effort the New I-64, rather than the New Highway 40, because the finished product will look and feel more like an interstate, spokeswoman Linda Wilson said.

Its signs will still display both emblems.

So the question arises. Will St. Louisans ever call it I-64?

"Maybe when they remodel it," said John Woolbright, 68, of St. Louis. "Older people call it Highway 40. Younger people, not so much."

Some St. Louisans are calling it I-64, though they remain a minority.

"Sixty-four-forty is what I hear people calling it," said Kelly Stevens, 21, a student at St. Louis University who's lived in St. Louis for four years. She's not tied to the name Highway 40.

"People will call it I-64 if that's what they're promoting."

ecrouch@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8119