The first paving of the new Interstate and Defense Highway System is laid west of Topeka, Kansas, on what will become I-70.
Urged to ease congestion on America’s roads and inspired by Germany’s autobahns, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956. The new law poured $33 billion (about $250 billion in today’s money) into overhauling the country’s roadways. America would never be the same. Before the act, U.S. highways were narrow, meandering, stop-and-start affairs, passing right through cities and towns. Connecting roads sprouted off haphazardly, and bazaar-like marketplaces lined the shoulders. They linked the nation in organic, mom-and-pop fashion.
After the act, interstate travel was defined by the massive, multilane, high-speed funnels we know today. It was General Motors’ 1939 Futurama exhibit (see here) come true: coast to coast without a stoplight. “When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must,” wrote John Steinbeck, “it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.”
Some older roads were improved and incorporated into the system, but small towns that were bypassed withered and died. New towns flourished around exits. Fast-food and motel franchises replaced small businesses. Trucks supplanted trains for shipping goods cross-country. In ever greater numbers, Americans fled from inner cities (often scarred by new interstates built over old neighborhoods) to suburbs. Old forms of traffic congestion gave way to new.
Not everyone holds with Steinbeck’s nostalgia. They see the 43,000-mile system as the arteries and veins of the nation’s economy. “More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America,” said Eisenhower in 1963. Before the information superhighway came the superhighway.—BK