Daughters of Promise January/February 2016 | Page 8

ORIGINS:

Interstate Systems

We often take America’s
Greatest Public Works
Project for granted.
In 1919, an army convoy
set out on a mission to
see how long it would
take them to reach
San Francisco from
Washington, DC.
They needed to
know what would
happen if the
army ever had to
do a cross-country
trip because of a
national disaster.
Things like dirt
roads, mountain
trails, rickety bridges,
and lack of rest areas
along the way caused
the trip to take 62 days.
The government knew
something needed to
change, but it wasn’t until
the 1930s that a plan was
developed by the Bureau
of Public Roads. It was given
the okay under the Federal Aid
Highway of 1944, but there was no
funding.
However, there was a man with an
idea. America’s travel system was a major concern
of President Eisenhower, especially since he had been
on the army convoy mission and also had seen Germany’s efficient
Reichsautobahnen. He signed in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of
1956, which started the original building of 41,000 miles of Interstate
Highway, along with a gas tax increase to help supply the funding.

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