Interstate highway system begins

National system of limited access roads built to facilitate movement across the country

Date Enabling act passed in Congress on June 26, 1956

Interstate highways allowed much faster movement across the country, facilitated vacations, allowed the creation of suburbs, and helped devastate the inner cities.

The highway system of the United States developed slowly. By the 1920’s, despite the invention of the automobile some twenty years prior, no system of well developed and paved roads had yet developed. It might take someone in an automobile five days to travel one hundred miles, and newspapers published guides to day trips that in today’s automobiles would take less than two hours. Cars of that era had frequent breakdowns, and tires were touted if they lasted four thousand miles, while roads frequently were made of dirt. The 1920’s saw some attention to these issues, and the first paved roads were made linking cities. These roads ran from town to town, and thus travelers encountered stoplights in each town through which they ventured. Moreover, the roads were not overly straight or direct, making vehicle trips time-consuming.

During the 1920’s, the first attempt was made to create highways that would link major cities. In 1925, Congress passed the first legislation to create an interstate highway system across America. However, this system was slow to develop and was hindered by the Great Depression. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) helped complete some segments of the highways. One of the most famous routes developed was Route 66, immortalized in the Nat King Cole song “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66.” This road was not fully finished and paved, however, until 1938. The highways were used as travel routes by the many who migrated for jobs during the Great Depression, and those who could afford to used it for vacations during the 1920’s and 1930’s. The roads, however, were crumbling by the end of the 1940’s, as little had been done to maintain them during World War II. The nation came to realize the need for a higher-capacity highway system that would serve the growing needs of a burgeoning population.

During the 1930’s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had called for national toll roads to be built to support greater traffic. In 1938, Congress had paid for a national study of the issue. This report held that toll roads would not be self-supporting but that a system of nontoll roads would be beneficial. This nontoll system was popularized by the General Motors Futurama display at the 1939 World’s Fair, which suggested that fourteen-lane roads be built with radio beams separating the cars, and that cars should be able to travel up to 100 miles per hour.

Government Support

The federal government was the impetus behind the creation of the interstate system, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower championed the cause. Eisenhower remembered being a young army officer moving his troops from one side of the United States to the other and the inordinate length of time involved in that trip. During World War II, he had also seen the wonderful German Autobahn system. His own negative experience with the American system and positive experience with a foreign system led him to believe that a new system of highways was sorely needed, and in his years before and during his presidency, he campaigned for a better highway system. Eisenhower believed that there was a huge amount of congestion caused by the lack of good highways and that many deaths and injuries resulted from the lack of good roads.

Eisenhower had advocates in his search for a better highway system. Among the congressmen who were vital in their support of the bill were Senator Albert Gore, Sr., and representatives George H. Fallon and Hale Boggs. There were also private individuals and cabinet officials who supported the program. These people included Francis V. DuPont and Charles Curtiss, who both worked for the Bureau of Public Roads, and Charles E. Wilson, secretary of defense, who formerly had been the leader of General Motors. Thus, President Eisenhower, cabinet officials, private individuals, and the U.S. Congress all were in favor of better interstate highways.

Factors Precipitating the Interstate System

At the start of the 1950’s, the U.S. interstate highway system was inadequate, largely as a result of the rise of the suburbs. After World War II, many Americans moved out of the cities to buy a suburban house with a backyard. However, most working-age Americans still needed to commute into the city for their jobs, a task that proved time-consuming on antiquated highways. However, if one could access a highway and drive fifty or sixty miles an hour to work, commute times could be cut in half, enabling people to live twice as far away from work. One of the first suburbs to be developed in the United States was Levittown, on Long Island, New York. Levittown and similar suburbs used mass-production techniques to cut costs, which made the suburbs even more affordable and available. Federal housing aid, in the form of low-cost mortgages, also made the suburbs accessible to Americans. Suburbia, therefore, was at the heart of an increased demand for the highways.

The postwar affluence in the United States and the population’s concomitant love of cars played an important role in the rise of the highway system. In the years between 1945 and 1960, the per-capita income of the average American increased 20 percent, even accounting for inflation. Many people invested a portion of their surplus income in an automobile or in a second automobile. Moreover, the growing power of labor unions affected workers’ salaries. Many unions managed to negotiate “escalator” clauses into their contracts so that their wages would grow every year of the contract, making life better for union members and decreasing the number of strikes. In the long run, this made some American industries less competitive, but it also increased the paychecks of many union workers, enabling their purchase of more automobiles.

Many believed that the poor road system also held back the national economy by hindering the transportation of goods. People also wanted to travel more on the roadways, and the 1950’s saw the origination of theme parks, such as Disneyland, as national leisure destinations. Perhaps most important, the desire for better national defense led many to believe that American roads had to be improved. The 1950’s experienced the height of the Cold War and widely held fears of an imminent Soviet attack. Eisenhower firmly believed that the United States needed good roads to move troops quickly. Others argued for a system of interstates to allow cities to be evacuated in the case of a nuclear attack.

The Interstate System Becomes Reality

After considerable debate over the apportionment of the funding between the federal government and the states, as well as several congressional amendments, the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 was passed on June 26, 1956, in the U.S. Congress. In the act, the interstate system was expanded to 41,000 miles, and to construct the network, $25 billion—or approximately 90 percent of the construction costs—was authorized for fiscal years 1957 through 1969. The other costs and upkeep of the system were left to the state governments, typically funded via an increase in taxes on such things as gasoline; it is a structure still in existence. The act commenced what would prove to be the biggest public works project in the nation’s history.

Impact

The interstate highway system had three main effects on America. The first was that it allowed the continuation and expansion of the suburbs. With highways, suburbs were able to expand, and people moved farther from city centers. The highways also cemented America as a car culture. Americans have used motor transportation for both business and pleasure purposes; had the interstate highway system not been built, a more effective mass transportation infrastructure would have to have been created. The interstate highway system also generally contributed to a decline of America’s cities. Most of the middle and upper classes moved out to the suburbs, a process that devastated home values and led to a decline in both the revenues of the cities and the quality of the school systems, an unfortunate and unforeseen consequence of the interstate highway system.

Bibliography

Daniels, George H., and Mark H. Rose, eds. Energy and Transport: Historical Perspectives on Policy Issues. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1982. Examines historical components of energy and transportation issues.

Dilger, Robert Jay. American Transportation Policy. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Examines why the United States has failed to develop a coordinated national transportation policy, focusing especially on political issues. It examines highways, railroads, and airports.

Kaszynski, William. The American Highway: The History and Culture of Roads in the United States. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000. Provides a pictorial and analytical look at the development of the American highway system. Also explores the related development of roadside restaurants, hotels, and gas stations.

Lewis, Tom. Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life. New York: Penguin, 1999. This work discusses how the building of the American freeway system changed America, particularly by moving people who were in the highway’s path, destroying their neighborhoods, and creating the suburbs.

Rose, Mark H. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Explores the political considerations and landscape that brought about the interstate highway system.