Highway 123
Ruta 123
Route information
Maintained by Puerto Rico DTPW
Length	78.40 km[1] (48.72 mi)
Existed	circa 1910–present
Major junctions
South end	PR-12 in Playa
Major intersections	PR-2 in Playa PR-163 in Canas Urbano PR-14 / PR-123P in Primero–Cuarto PR-1 in Primero–Segundo PR-132 in Canas Urbano PR-9 in Magueyes Urbano PR-143 in Saltillo PR-135 in Juan González PR-111 in Utuado barrio-pueblo PR-146 in Río Arriba
North end	PR-10 / PR-6609 in Hato Viejo
Location
Country	United States
Territory	Puerto Rico
Municipalities	Ponce, Adjuntas, Utuado, Arecibo
Highway system
Roads in Puerto Rico List
← PR-122 → PR-124
Carretera Núm. 6
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	Ponce, Puerto Rico
Built	19th-century
NRHP reference No.	100006919
Added to NRHP	September 14, 2021

Puerto Rico Highway 123 (PR-123) is a secondary highway that connects the city Arecibo to the city of Ponce. It runs through the towns of Utuado and Adjuntas, before reaching Ponce.^[1] A parallel road is being built, PR-10, that is expected to take on most of the traffic currently using PR-123.

The road dates from the late 19th century and it started as a road to link the coffee-farming mountain town of Adjuntas to the southern port city of Ponce for the export of coffee.^[2] (Eventually the road was completed to the smaller northern port city of Arecibo as well, connecting the mountain town of Utuado in its way.) PR-123 was built under the colonial government of Spain in Puerto Rico to connect the coffee-growing town of Adjuntas to the port city of Ponce as a farm-to-market road.^[3] By the early 20th century, it was already graced with many bungalow-style summerhouses.^[4]

The construction of the first Ponce-to-Adjuntas road got underway through the dedicated efforts of local political leader, attorney, and composer Olimpio Otero in the late nineteenth century.^[5] In 1887, the Ponce Municipal Assembly issued a resolution to use vagrants in the construction of this road, to add to the labor already being performed by prisoners.^[6] In 1903, the Puerto Rico Legislature named a bridge on the Ponce to Adjuntas section of the road to his memory for his outstanding dedication to the building of that stretch of the road.^[3] The bridge is located in the Magueyes barrio of the municipality of Ponce. During his 1910 surveys, American surveyor William H. Armstrong called the road "a beautiful work of engineering."^[7] According to Armstrong, the road was 29 kilometers long and had 87 bridges and culverts.

• 
  Bridge on the PR-123 road from Ponce to Adjuntas, ca. 1890s
• 
  The Ponce-Adjuntas Road in Ponce in 1899

True to its farm-to-market purpose, PR-123 was designed to descend from the mountain town of Adjuntas and make its way through the Cordillera Central until it reached the city of Ponce, edging Plaza Las Delicias, located just two blocks from the Plaza del Mercado de Ponce fruits-and-vegetables central market place. The road then continued south, via Avenida Hostos, to the port of Ponce where coffee and other farm products were shipped to the United States and Europe. Under the Plan Ponce en Marcha, Avenida Hostos will be enlarged from two to four lanes.^[8]

PR-123 was signed PR-10 until a new and wider parallel road was built (see PR-10) which adopted its number.^[9][10][11] This route signing for this old, winding road can still be seen in some old street maps of the city of Ponce.^[12]

The stretch from Ponce to Adjuntas was built under the Spanish government. The remainder of the route to Arecibo was built after the Americans took over in 1898.^[13] This second stretch opened on July 1, 1904. The whole course of the road from its southern end in Ponce to its northern end in Arecibo was signed as Road No. 6 in those days.^[14][15]

Navigating this first PR-10 road was very tedious as the road was engineered to run from mountainside to mountainside, following the contours of the mountains, and along the natural definitions of the course of rivers, to reach its destination. Such design, however, limited considerably the speed of travel. It was also necessary to drive through the congested downtown areas of the various towns and villages in the way to get from one terminus of the road to the other, something that proved to be very time-consuming as vehicular traffic in those towns and villages increased. Despite these drawbacks, the road was heavily used for many decades. However, as traffic on this road increased in the 1950s and 1960s, the road started to show its limits.

The completed road had a length of 82 km.^[16]

• 
  The Ponce–Adjuntas Road in Ponce in 1920, now a section of PR-123
• 
  Another view of a section of the Ponce-Adjuntas Road in 1920

The road was built in 13 segments as follows:^[17]

The road is prone to landslides and closings due to frequent heavy rains.^[18]

• 
  Pier at the end of PR-123, near El Ancla in Playa, Ponce - near the Southern terminus of PR-123
• 
  PR-123, north of PR-9 in Barrio Magueyes, Ponce, Puerto Rico, looking north
• 
  Río de Caguana as seen from PR-123 in Utuado
• 
  Lago Dos Bocas, view from the bridge on the dam facing south, PR-123

Municipality	Location	km [19][20][21][22]	mi	Destinations	Notes
Ponce	Playa	0.0	0.0	PR-12 (Avenida Santiago de los Caballeros) – Ponce	Southern terminus of PR-123
		1.6	0.99	Southern terminus of the Carretera Central
		1.7– 1.8	1.1– 1.1	PR-585 north (Avenida Padre Noel) – Ponce
		3.2	2.0	Puente del Río Portugués over the Río Portugués
		3.5	2.2	PR-2 (Ponce Bypass) – Mayagüez, San Juan
	Canas Urbano	4.3– 4.4	2.7– 2.7	PR-163 (Bulevar Luis A. Ferré Aguayo) – Mayagüez, San Juan
	Primero–Cuarto line	4.6	2.9	PR-14 north (Calle Salud) / PR-123P south (Calle Ferrocarril) – Ponce	One-way streets; the Carretera Central continues toward Juana Díaz; PR-123P southbound access via Calle Aurora
	Primero–Cuarto– Segundo–Tercero quadripoint	5.2	3.2	PR-1P (Calle Marina) / PR-133 east (Calle Comercio) – Ponce	One-way streets
	Primero–Segundo line	5.3	3.3	PR-14R (Calle Unión) / PR-123P south (Calle Concordia) – Ponce	One-way streets; PR-14R northbound access via PR-14
		5.5	3.4	PR-1 (Calle Simón de la Torre) – Ponce	One-way street; northbound access via PR-1P
	Segundo–Canas Urbano– Primero tripoint	6.3	3.9	PR-2R south (Carretera Pámpanos) – Guayanilla
	Canas Urbano	7.3	4.5	PR-132 west – Peñuelas
	Magueyes Urbano	9.8	6.1	PR-9 (Ronda de Circunvalación Roman Baldorioty de Castro) – Ponce, Adjuntas
	Magueyes	10.9	6.8	PR-501 – Marueño
	Guaraguao	21.6	13.4	PR-501 – Guaraguao
		24.4	15.2	PR-515 – Guaraguao
		25.0– 25.1	15.5– 15.6	PR-516 – Guaraguao
Adjuntas	Saltillo	30.6	19.0	PR-143 (Ruta Panorámica) – Barranquitas	Southern terminus of the Ruta Panorámica concurrency; the Ruta Panorámica continues toward Utuado
	Adjuntas barrio-pueblo	34.3	21.3	PR-518 (Ruta Panorámica) – Saltillo	Northern terminus of the Ruta Panorámica concurrency; the Ruta Panorámica continues toward Lares
		35.3– 35.4	21.9– 22.0	PR-521 (Calle Luis Muñoz Rivera) / PR-5516 north (Calle Rodulfo González) – Utuado	One-way streets; PR-521 access via Calle Rius Rivera
		35.7– 35.8	22.2– 22.2	Puente Chavier over the Río Cidra[23]
	Garzas	37.5	23.3	PR-522 – Garzas
	Juan González	37.7	23.4	PR-5518 east to PR-10 (Carretera Rigoberto "Pucho" Ramos Aquino) – Ponce
		38.0	23.6	PR-135 west (Carretera Francisco L. Báez Cruz) – Lares
		38.1	23.7	PR-10 (Carretera Rigoberto "Pucho" Ramos Aquino) – Ponce	One-way ramp; southbound access via PR-5518
	Pellejas	44.7	27.8	PR-524 – Pellejas
Utuado	Arenas	48.7	30.3	Puente Blanco over the Río Pellejas[23]
		49.5	30.8	PR-10 north (Carretera Félix Ramón "Moncho" Estévez Datis) – Utuado, Arecibo
		53.5	33.2	PR-6103 to PR-10 (Carretera Félix Ramón "Moncho" Estévez Datis) – Arecibo
	Utuado barrio-pueblo	55.4– 55.5	34.4– 34.5	PR-5523 – Arenas
		55.5– 55.6	34.5– 34.5	PR-6111 (Avenida Guillermo Esteves) – Utuado
		55.6– 55.7	34.5– 34.6	Puente de Utuado over the Río Grande de Arecibo[23]
		55.7 60.6[a]	34.6 37.7	PR-111 east (Avenida Fernando L. Ribas Dominicci) – Jayuya	Eastern terminus of PR-111 concurrency
		60.3[a] 55.8	37.5 34.7	PR-111 west (Calle María M. Fernández Cruz) – Lares	Western terminus of PR-111 concurrency
	Río Abajo	59.9– 60.0	37.2– 37.3	PR-6613 – Río Abajo
Arecibo	Río Arriba	68.8	42.8	PR-146 east – Ciales
		70.5– 70.6	43.8– 43.9	PR-6621 – Río Arriba
		70.6	43.9	PR-621 west to PR-10 – Arecibo, Utuado
	Hato Viejo	78.40	48.72	PR-10 north / PR-6609 (Carretera Jesús M. González García) – Arecibo	Northern terminus of PR-123; partial cloverleaf interchange; no entrance ramp to PR-10 southbound
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi       Concurrency terminus       Incomplete access       Route transition

• List of highways in Ponce, Puerto Rico
• List of streets in Ponce, Puerto Rico

• Fay Fowlie de Flores. Ponce, Perla del Sur: Una Bibliográfica Anotada. Second Edition. 1997. Ponce, Puerto Rico: Universidad de Puerto Rico en Ponce. p. 110. Item 564. LCCN 92-75480
• Eugenio Astol. "El diputado 'Carretera'". Puerto Rico Ilustrado. 16 de mayo de 1936. pp. 13, 66. (Colegio Universitario Tecnológico de Ponce, CUTPO)

• Arecibo-Ponce Road c. 1930
• The Ponce-Adjuntas Road c. 1940s–1950s
• Juana Matos Bridge in Barrio Magueyes, Ponce, Puerto Rico c. 1908
• Another view of the Juana Matos Bridge on the Ponce-Adjuntas Road in Barrio Magueyes, Ponce, Puerto Rico c. 1908
• Abandoned Bus Stop at the intersection of PR-123 and PR-524 in Barrio Pellejas, Adjuntas