The East–West Highway is a long-proposed east–west highway corridor in northern New England (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont), intended to link remote northern communities in those states with markets in the Maritimes, Quebec, and upstate New York. History Low population and natural barriers like the White Mountains have long impeded significant economic development in northern New England. Proposals for an east–west highway date back to the 1940s. In the early 1970s, all three northern New England states and New York proposed two new Interstate Highway corridors, both of which were designated as Interstate 92: From Albany, New York, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, incorporating the route that is now New Hampshire Route 101 and the corridor that is New York Route 7 and Vermont Route 9. From Glens Falls, New York, to Calais, Maine, tracing U.S. Route 4 through Vermont and New Hampshire. The Federal Highway Administration ultimately did not approve the plan. Then-Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine said in 2004 that the region is disadvantaged by the fact that it was the only region in the United States for which a federal High Priority Corridor was not designated in the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. In 2012, the east–west highway was again proposed, this time as a privately financed toll road. On October 25, 2012, New Brunswick Route 1 achieved a four-lane divided highway link with the U.S. border at the International Avenue Border Crossing in Calais, Maine. Location Current backers of the highway propose an east–west axis through northern and central Maine; these could cover up to three existing surface ports of entry on the U.S.-Canada border, two from Québec; and one from New Brunswick. Any new highway achieving the New Brunswick crossing would run from Interstate 395 in Brewer, Maine, to the international border near Calais, with a direct link to New Brunswick Route 1, a major transportation corridor serving the Maritimes. A potential obstacle to the eastern end of such an American highway could be the presence of the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, as its Baring Division's easternmost extremities, on the American side, lie close to the International Avenue Bridge that crosses the St. Croix River, the international border in the area. In the west, the more southerly located link with Québec would travel northwest from Interstate 95 near Waterville, Maine, to the Canada–United States border at Coburn Gore, with a connection to a proposed extension