FRAZIERS BOTTOM, W.Va. (AP) — A decadeslong effort to reroute and widen U.S. Route 35 to four lanes in West Virginia became a reality Thursday with completion of the final upgraded link.

Gov. Jim Justice and other leaders held a ribbon-cutting ceremony before hundreds of people for a 15-mile segment of the highway near the Putnam County community of Fraziers Bottom. It’s the last part of U.S. 35 from Interstate 64 to the West Virginia-Ohio state line to be widened.

The road is heavily used by tractor-trailers traveling between Ohio and West Virginia. The two-lane version had been the site of numerous accidents. Ohio has already upgraded its section of the route to four lanes.

Justice said that when he was a student at Marshall University in the 1970s, he hunted grouse and quail in the U.S. 35 area.

“I wondered, good God, this place is dangerous,” Justice recalled. “If there’s ever a place that needed a road, it was this. Think about how long that’s been.”

Finding funding for the project was the greatest hurdle. At one point a state study suggested the feasibility of placing tolls on the road to pay for its cost.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito worked on getting the highway completed during her seven terms in the U.S. House before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014. She said the central theme of the highway’s completion was keeping travelers safe.

“I’ve seen many people here, many faces, as we’ve been on this journey of Route 35, and the first comment we have to each other is, ‘did we ever think we’d get to this day?’” Capito said. “And here we are. To say I’m elated is a total understatement.”

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin served as governor from 2005 to 2010, when all but the final 15 miles of U.S. Route 35 were completed.

“This was a tough one,” Manchin said of the final stretch.

The newest section goes from the Beech Hill community in Mason County to the Buffalo Bridge in Putnam County. It included eight bridges and a new interchange at the junction of U.S. 35 and West Virginia 869. It was a public-private partnership between the Division of Highways and Bizzack Construction Co. of Lexington, Kentucky.