In 1919, a young lieutenant colonel in the United States Army was part of the first transcontinental military motor convoy from Washington D.C. to San Francisco.
His name was Dwight Eisenhower.
Like most everyone else in those days, these soldiers traveled on dirt roads and across crumbling bridges. It took two months to make the trip, something Eisenhower never forgot.
Fast forward nearly four decades to Ike’s presidency, when the interstate highway system was authorized by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
Known officially as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, it is the network of highways which now serves all major cities in the continental United States.
If a route ran north and south, it was given an odd number. East and west roads were given an even number.
For north-south routes, the numbers begin in the west. Thus I-5 runs north and south along the west coast, while I-95 runs north and south along the Atlantic coast.
Numbers divisible by five were intended to be major among the primary routes, carrying traffic long distances. Connecting interstate routes that travel around a city carry three-digit numbers, such as I-270 around Columbus.
The entire system has nearly 50,000 miles. Today it represents five percent of American highways, but nearly 30 percent of all highway miles traveled.
Looking back, do you remember your first extended trip on the interstate highway system? Mine was a trip down I-75 to Florida over the Christmas holidays in 1968 to commemorate my parents’ 25th anniversary.
Traffic was fairly heavy around Cincinnati and Atlanta, but fairly smooth sailing the rest of the way. Not much has changed in that regard.
I-75 actually starts from the north at Sault St. Marie, the border city between northern Michigan and Ontario. It ends at the interchange with Florida state routes 924 and 826 in Hialeah, a suburb of Miami.
Major east-west junctions of I-75 include I-10 near Lake City, Fla.; I-20 in Atlanta, Ga.; I-24 in Chattanooga, Tenn.; I-75 in Knoxville, Tenn.; I-64 in Lexington, Ky.; I-70 near Dayton; I-80/I-90/Ohio Turnpike near Toledo; and I-94 near Detroit.
Our interstate highway system has become a prominent part of American life, though we have come to take it for granted.
The distribution of virtually all goods and services involve interstate highways at some point, and many citizens commonly use them to travel while on vacation.
Unlike our counterparts in most other industrialized nations, many interstates pass through downtown areas. This has facilitated the emergence of suburban development.
While interstates have helped many communities grow, they represented the economic death knell of other communities who were left off the highly-traveled new routes.
These interstates, with their chain restaurants and hotels at nearly every exit, stood in sharp contrast to the romanticized perception of county and state roads which offered more of an opportunity to stop at local businesses or see scenic rural America.
“When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing,” wrote John Steinbeck in Travels With Charley.
A generation later, newsman Charles Kuralt echoed the same thought in his biography, A Life on the Road.
“The interstate highway is a wonderful thing,” wrote Kuralt. “It makes it possible to go from coast to coast without seeing anything or meeting anybody. If the United States interests you, stay off the interstates.”
So, like most of us who have turned 50, the interstate highway system has done both good and bad things.
But, like life itself, there’s no turning back.