As a toll road

The parkway was opened in November 1965 as the Kentucky Bluegrass parkway (the "Kentucky" was dropped a few years later) and was originally a toll road, as were all Kentucky parkways. The parkway route largely parallels that of U.S. Route 62. State law requires that toll collection ceases when enough tolls are collected to pay off the parkway's construction bonds; that occurred in 1991.

Name changes

In 2003, the road was renamed in honor of Martha Layne Collins, the first female governor of Kentucky. Previously, it was the Kentucky Bluegrass parkway (and signed as "KB Parkway"), then later renamed the "Blue Grass Parkway" (sometimes with "Bluegrass" as one word, though in the highway's name, it was officially two words), and often called the "BG Parkway" because of the abbreviation once used on its original signs from 1965 until they were replaced by a shield with the Collins name in 2003.^[3]

Connection with Interstate 64

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No connection to I-64 was planned as it had not been constructed and would not open until the late 1970s.

By the time the road opened, however, it was first named the Kentucky Bluegrass parkway, and then later renamed just the Bluegrass Parkway.^{[citation needed]} There have been talks for a direct connection from the eastern terminus of the parkway at US 60 to I-64, but all have failed. Such a connection would almost certainly draw enormous opposition in the Lexington area due to the many horse farms that would be adversely affected; the thoroughbred breeding industry is an important direct employer and a major tourist draw in the region.