The event marked the beginning of the largest public works project in modern U. The general route of I was laid out during the early months after the Federal-Aid Highway Act was enacted in When the entire mile stretch of I in Kansas was finished in June , it was the longest continuous segment of Interstate highway to be completed by any state.
At the time Kansas, Missouri, and Pennsylvania were the only states to have a multi-lane I from border to border. Portland cement concrete was used on I from Salina east to Topeka and in Kansas City, and asphaltic concrete asphalt pavement was used from Salina west to the Colorado border.
Among those present for the dedication ceremonies were Governor Fred Hall, U. The IHS was the largest public works project undertaken in the Unites States and came at a time when the Cold War consumed not only a large part of the federal budget but also the attention of the U.
Shortly after Eisenhower took office in , Soviet leader Josef Stalin died, setting off a power struggle in the Kremlin. On Aug. It was unsettling to have a superpower with an unstable government armed with the latest nuclear weapons technology. This event further jolted an already rattled U. Citizens built bomb shelters, stockpiled food, and prepared for imminent nuclear war. In a July speech to the Governors' Conference, Vice President Richard Nixon expressed concern over the "appalling inadequacies" of the existing U.
Nixon mentioned atomic or atomic war no less than 10 times in the speech. This topic was on the minds of most Americans. Seventy-nine percent of the public thought a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was imminent. In the event of war, 70 million urban residents required evacuation by road. The Clay Committee also warned of the need for large-scale evacuation of cities in the event of nuclear war. Furthermore, it cited federal civil defense authorities who were worried that a withdrawal from urban areas would be the largest ever attempted.
The Committee soberly stated, "The rapid improvement of the complete 40,mile interstate system, including the necessary urban connections thereto, is therefore vital as a civil-defense measure. A large scale urban evacuation drill conducted in June drove home the importance of an evacuation plan.
The ensuing confusion coupled with crowded evacuation routes seemed to make President Eisenhower's case for the IHS. Moreover, the administration was serious about the role of a uniform system of roads for national defense and directed Department of Defense DOD involvement. When the IHS began in earnest, a testing facility was created in central Illinois to evaluate pavement, road standards, and construction techniques, among other things.
The DOD contributed equipment and personnel for the tests. Military leaders knew from their experiences in the two previous world wars that roads were vital to national defense.
During World War I, military truck traffic destroyed roads. In World War II, defense plants were often supplied by truck, but the lack of road standards sometimes impeded timely delivery. Over a two-year period, Army trucks drove 17 million miles on the test roads. Some vehicles carried blocks of concrete in an effort to see how long a ton truck would take to destroy roads and bridges.
Highway building and maintenance standards were developed from the tests. Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of creating federal funds for interstate highway construction.
As the IHS developed so did its ability to support national defense. For example, throughout the system, mile-long stretches of concrete pavement double as emergency landing strips for military aircraft. And the Bureau of Public Roads issued a book, General Location of National System of Interstate Highways, that showed where interstates would be located in and around the nation's largest metropolitan areas.
Opponents to the funding mechanism in were now agreeing to some increases in the gas tax. With Eisenhower standing firm for legislation to create the interstate system, Congress went back to work on it, and finally produced legislation that called for 90 percent federal funding, with money coming from a Highway Trust Fund that received the revenue from the federal gasoline tax.
The final version also reflected a compromise on how the funds would be apportioned among the states, and it contained provisions on uniform design standards, inclusion of existing toll roads, and the wage rate to be paid on these federal construction projects. It also permitted use of federal funds to purchase the rights-of-way for the roads and allowed two-lane segments, although later legislation required all parts of the system to be four-lane, limited-access highways.
On June 26, , both the Senate and the House gave final approval to the compromise version and sent it to Eisenhower, who was in Walter Reed Army Hospital with an intestinal ailment. Today's interstate highway system—first envisioned in the s, then enacted two decades later after Eisenhower put his considerable prestige behind it, and now observing its 50th anniversary—has had a tremendous impact on the country. While created in part to help defend the nation in the event of an emergency, the interstates, with limited access and many lanes, have also spurred and speeded the development of commerce throughout the country and abroad.
Trucks move quickly from one region to another, transporting everything from durable goods and mail to fresh produce and the latest fashions. And they have increased the mobility of all Americans, allowing them to move out of the cities and establish homes in a growing suburbia even farther from their workplaces and to travel quickly from one region to another for vacation and business.
But the interstates have also increased congestion, smog, and automobile dependency. The shift to the increasingly outward bound suburbs has caused a drop in population densities of urban areas, and the ease of long-distance travel on high-speed, limited-access highways has contributed to the decline of mass transit, such as rail and bus. During the decades of its construction, the interstate highway system was the largest public works project in American history—pumping billions into the nation's economy all over the country.
Today, it still has an economic impact because of the continued maintenance and repairs needed for the roadways. In , on the centennial of Eisenhower's birth, President George H. Bush redesignated the interstate system as the Dwight D. One of the system's longest roadways, Interstate 80, would be quite familiar to Eisenhower today. It starts just across the Hudson River from New York City, then goes through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and into Ohio, where it then follows generally the route of the Army convoy to San Francisco that stoked an interest in roads for the young Army officer from Kansas.
David A. He specializes in transportation records and has published articles and given numerous presentations concerning railroad records in the National Archives. Sources consulted concerning the history of the interstate highway system include Mark H.
There are two main sites on the Internet for information on the interstate highway system. One is the Federal Highway Administration 50th anniversary site. Another is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. These sites have several articles and images of records relating to the history of the Interstate Highway System. Primary sources used in this article for information on the convoy include "The Report on First Transcontinental Motor Convoy" by E.
This report includes reports on the vehicles on the convoy, a daily log of the trip, and copies of the telegrams sent by the ordnance observer. The Eisenhower report on the convoy as an observer for the Tank Corps is located on the Eisenhower Library web site. And certain roads were marked so that planes could read from the air.
I had no idea. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
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