Underrated in America: Interstate highways

When I was seven, my family took a summer vacation to Florida. From Ohio, it took us three days, weaving up and down two-lane roads through the Appalachians and the pine forests of Georgia to reach our destination, Ft. Lauderdale.

While you might imagine this as a blue highway idyll, it was anything but. The mountains were lined with abandoned cars which had died on the steep grades. Pavement was often so abused by truck traffic that potholes kept local tire shops in tourist-gouging bliss. In the days before Dramamine, riding in the backward-facing seat of our Ford Galaxy wagon on a mountain road was a bulimic's dream.

The interstate highway system changed such travel forever. Now, I can reach the East Coast in ten hours, Florida in twenty, the Pacific in seventy-two. The driving is much easier, cheaper, and dramatically safer. As air travel becomes more unpleasant, car travel is increasingly appealing. Yet none of this was the reason that Eisenhower pushed for the roads to be built.

Don't miss the rest of our series on Underrated In America!

Detroit had been lobbying for such a system to make the most of their overpowered behemoths, of course, but Ike was more swayed by his military experience, and the value of mobility to national defense. The plan actually began with a list provided by the Army to the Bureau of Public Roads of routes that would best serve the military.