Interstate 540 (
I-540) is a
freeway spur route of
I-40 in the US state of
Arkansas in
Fort Smith. The total length is . At first, I-540 was a short spur connecting Fort Smith and
Van Buren to I-40 as one of the original five Arkansas Interstates. The route ran just over to
US 271 near the
Oklahoma state line. The growing
Northwest Arkansas area and the
University of Arkansas needed an Interstate connection to
Little Rock, and through traffic north to
Kansas City had also outgrown the winding
US 71 north from I-40. The route was extended north to
Mountainburg in the late 1990s on an all-new alignment, (Going under concurrency with I-40, one of the only auxiliary routes with a concurrency with its parent) with the route being completed to
Bella Vista in January 1999. However, the segment north of I-40 became a part of
Interstate 49 in 2014.