US Route 74 runs from a town in eastern Tennessee called Cleveland, through the entire width of southern North Carolina to end at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.  US Route 74's western end used to be in Chattanooga, meaning that the western and eastern ends of US Route 74 were both in the same place as US Route 76's endpoints.  US Route 74 lies somewhat north of US Route 76, which runs mainly in South Carolina.  US Route 74's routing takes it from its western end at Interstate 75 around the south side of Cleveland, Tennessee, and into the southwestern corner of North Carolina; from there, it turns toward Asheville.  It only uses Interstate 40 east to Interstate 26 south, though, bouncing away from Asheville.  US Route 74 returns to its own eastward alignment near Hendersonville; that eastward alignment becomes the main east-west highway through Charlotte (sorry Interstate 85, I don't think you count).  US Route 74 continues along the southern border of North Carolina through Wilmington to cross into Wrightsville Beach on the same bridge used by US Route 76.  In Wrightsville Beach, US Route 74 splits from US Route 76 to poke northward a bit before ending unceremoniously and without notice (I didn't find an end marker there in July 2019).

My photo of US Route 74 is a westbound trailblazer that fails to mention US Route 76, as both routes join together in Wrightsville Beach to cross their shared bridge westward into Wilmington, North Carolina.  This photo was taken in July 2019 during a vacation to the Wilmington area beaches. The mention of US Route 76 may be missing, making this a failure of a sign assembly, but at least the US Route 74 shield looked nice enough for me to photograph it for my collection.  The eastern end of US Route 74 is only a mile or so north of where I took this photo.
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