Lake Shore Drive is a mostly freeway-standard expressway

Limited-access road

A limited-access road known by various terms worldwide, including limited-access highway, dual-carriageway and expressway, is a highway or arterial road for high-speed traffic which has many or most characteristics of a controlled-access highway , including limited or no access to adjacent...

 running parallel with and alongside the shoreline of Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron...

 through Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, USA

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Except for the portion north of Foster Avenue

Foster Avenue (Chicago)

Foster Avenue is a major east-west street on the North Side of Chicago as well as the northwestern suburbs. Foster Avenue separates the Chicago lakefront neighborhoods of Edgewater to the north and Uptown to the south....

 (5200 North), Lake Shore Drive is designated as part of U.S. Highway 41

U.S. Route 41 in Illinois

In the U.S. state of Illinois, U.S. Route 41 runs north from the Indiana border beneath the Chicago Skyway on Indianapolis Boulevard to the Wisconsin border north of the northern terminus of the Tri-State Tollway with Interstate 94. It is the only north–south U.S...

.

The downtown part originally opened as Leif Ericson Drive in 1937, named for Norse explorer Leif Ericson

Leif Ericson

Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer who is regarded as the first European to land in North America , nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus...

. The roadway was also called Field Boulevard; it was renamed Lake Shore Drive in 1946.
Lake Shore Drive's origins date back to Potter Palmer

Potter Palmer

Potter Palmer was an American businessman who was responsible for much of the development of State Street in Chicago.-Retailing career:...

, who coerced the city to build the street adjacent to his lakefront property to enhance its value.