The Interstate Highway System, 1939-1991

By Mark Rose

In April 1939, executives of the General Motors Corporation inaugurated a major exhibit at the New York World's Fair. Named "Futurama"– a word intended to signify a panorama of the future – the General Motors' exhibit immediately became the Fair's most popular attraction. Each day – even during the sweltering summer – thousands of visitors waited in long lines to enter Futurama. Once inside, they rode in cars around a track, looking at the exhibit below that portrayed the United States as General Motors thought it might become in far-off 1960. Visitors observed farmlands described as "drenched in blinding sunlight," cities characterized as "breathtaking," and above all, highways, vast, river-like highways featuring smooth-flowing traffic.

This montage of superhighways from the Eisenhower administration to the present links the futuristic dreams of yesteryear to the reality of today. In the second half of the 20th century, superhighways made travel and commerce easier, making America more homogeneous and speeding unparalleled prosperity. Center: President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

To wide-eyed residents of a nation still suffering the effects of the Great Depression, Futurama's designer, Norman Bel Geddes, emphasized the idea that a future of fast-flowing traffic on modern and beautifully designed, limited-access highways would help restore prosperity and hope to residents of city and countryside. Also in 1939, senior engineers at the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads came to a similar conclusion in a report issued that year entitled, Toll Roads and Free Roads. Like Bel Geddes, the authors of this report concluded that a new generation of urban road improvements would eliminate "properties [that] are dying," leading to "new and important developments." We now know that this unlikely convergence of a popular world's fair exhibit and a government report – as the Great Depression set the stage for World War II – set in motion long-term planning among state and federal road engineers, business leaders, and politicians that would finally result in the construction of the Interstate Highway System (IHS).

Before World War II, American engineers had constructed a limited number of freeway-like roads, including the great parkways in New York State, the Pennsylvania Toll Road, Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, and the Arroyo-Seco freeway in Los Angeles. Many of those same engineers had also studied and visited the much larger Autobahn system that was being constructed in Germany. However, in 1939, there was still no major political constituency for a grand system of highways to link the nation more tightly together. Advocates of such a system realized that securing congressional approval to finance construction of the IHS would never be automatic, or easy. Instead, those state and federal engineers who believed the nation would be better off with superhighways often took the lead in efforts to persuade political and business leaders that construction of a costly new system on top of the roads the nation already had would "pay off" for society in terms of improved traffic volume and flow, rising property values, and in particular reinvigoration of business in the nation's downtown areas.

Champion of a Highway System

Among the visionaries and planners of the era, no one was more active in promoting construction of the interstate system than Thomas H. MacDonald, chief of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads from 1919 to 1953. Authoritative in style, and known for having clear expectations for himself and his subordinates, MacDonald was addressed respectfully by colleagues – and even by members of the U.S. Congress – as "Chief." In 1904, MacDonald had graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in civil engineering. Like all or most engineering graduates of that era, MacDonald's instructors had emphasized the importance of practical solutions for the many practical problems of constructing highways and other physical improvements such as dams, railroads, and water and sewer systems. These projects were appropriate for a nation that was welcoming vast numbers of immigrants while still expanding westward and building new towns and cities. Like other senior federal officials such as Herbert Hoover, who was secretary of commerce (1921-1928) and then president of the United States (1929-1932), MacDonald, once he assumed nationwide responsibilities for highway construction, began to contemplate construction of a highway system far grander (and far costlier) than anything he had been taught in college. The motorcar, popularized by Henry Ford only a few decades earlier, was beginning to make a large segment of the population mobile and was also fuelling economic growth.

This 1919 photo shows an army convoy trying to drive across country. The convoy, 280 men and 72 vehicles, took two months to make it from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco via scattered highways and rural roads.

MacDonald was a missionary for highway improvements. One of his favorite arguments was that motorists and truckers could themselves pay for better roads in the form of higher gasoline taxes that would subsidize their construction. He pointed out that car and truck drivers were already paying just as much money, or more, for the privilege of driving on antiquated highways in the form of their own lost time, lost wages, and avoidable accidents. In numerous speeches and articles, MacDonald regularly drew connections between construction of an Interstate Highway System and the promise that cities as a whole and especially the central business district would experience not only reduced traffic, but also rising property values, increased employment, and improved sales. The point was that if the majority of long-distance traffic was shunted out of towns and cities, that the downtown centers of those places would become more pleasant to live, shop, and work.

MacDonald was able to buttress his claims with impressive studies of automobile and truck traffic conducted by state road engineers. After World War II, as Americans experienced renewed prosperity, traffic in local areas grew even more miserable for truckers and motorists stuck on two-lane highways that inevitably wound through the downtown areas of every town and city on the route. In addition, retailers on these traffic-clogged main streets increasingly lost sales to competitors opening stores in distant suburbs where it was easy to build giant parking lots. MacDonald's arguments took on even greater authority and urgency. Not until 1956, however, would members of Congress vote to appropriate funds to build the IHS.

City Versus Country

In 1944, as America's leaders planned for the end of World War II, the possible Interstate Highway System was on the federal legislative agenda. Members of the U.S. Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, could not at first agree on terms for funding postwar highway construction. One dispute was that farm groups and their many representatives in Congress wanted more federal aid to construct miles of low-cost roads that would make it easier for farmers to bring crops and families to nearby towns and markets. At the same time, representatives from New Jersey and New York and other east coast states with large urban populations demanded additional funds to pay for roads that would help improve traffic in congested cities. Proponents felt that federal money for highway projects promised a vast public works program for members of the armed forces as soon as the war ended. Truck owners, however, were not interested in whether highway building fostered jobs or improved property values. Leaders of the American Trucking Associations, a trade group composed of thousands of truck fleet owners and managers, urged reduction of gasoline taxes and construction of key routes that served shipping traffic.

The German Autobahn, pictured here in modern photos, inspired American engineers with superhighway dreams in the pre-World War II era.

Late in 1944, political leaders and leaders in the American trucking and farm industries reached a compromise. The federal government would pay 50 percent of the cost of building roads in cities as well as in rural areas important to farmers. As well, Congress would pay 50 percent of the costs to continue construction of the original federal-aid highway system, which since 1921 had formed the backbone of U.S. highways and included such well-known routes as US 66 running from Chicago to Los Angeles. To pay for all of that projected postwar road building, members of Congress voted to appropriate the then-gigantic sum of $450 million a year for three years starting as soon as the war ended. As part of this legislation, Congress authorized construction of the Interstate Highway System, but did not appropriate funds specifically to pay the immense costs for building it. Rather, Congress authorized state officials to transfer up to 25 percent of federal grants for highway construction to build the IHS.

During the late 1940s, however, few of those involved either at the federal or state level were willing to divert funds from relatively inexpensive urban and rural roads that promised to speed up traffic and get farmers to market in order to build 40,000 miles of the still untested and far more costly (per mile) Interstate Highway System. More important than engineering miracles, the $450 million appropriated by Congress promised construction contracts and jobs in every state of the union and certainly in most congressional districts. Disputes about the distribution of money – highway mileage politics, in other words – have always played an important role in shaping American highway legislation. In any event, in December 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, launching the largest and certainly the most expensive road-building program in the history of the federal government.

Postwar Traffic Jams

The legislation was fortuitous. Following the war, the nation's economy boomed, and everyone wanted a new car. Between 1945 and 1955, Americans more than doubled the number of automobiles and trucks on the nation's streets. In urban areas such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and Houston, traffic jams, delays, and accidents spiraled upward. In 1950, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that 40 percent of trip time in New England cities was wasted in traffic jams. As traffic delays grew worse, downtown retailers continued to worry about lost sales to new competitors who were opening stores in fast-growing suburbs. In spite of the Federal-Aid Highway Act, rapid increases in the costs of labor and materials reduced the number of miles actually constructed. Equally important, truck and auto manufacturers built – and Americans purchased – vehicles that were heavier, faster, and longer. If road engineers such as MacDonald were to construct a new generation of roads that were safe and efficient, then those roads would also have to be wider, thicker, and far costlier to build and maintain. MacDonald estimated that the pressure of traffic on the nation's roads was eight times greater than in the decades before World War II. As in previous years, leaders of farm, truck, and urban groups remained deadlocked over who should pay for these new roads and where they should be located.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the likeable ex-general who was president for most of the 1950s, presided over the creation of the Interstate Highway System.

Starting in 1951, leaders of the influential trucking industry attempted to break the deadlock in highway politics. In this period, most trucking firms were small, employing only a few office personnel and fewer than 100 drivers. The key to truckers' clout in American politics was their trade association. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., and with members in every state, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) employed talented attorneys who were expert at defending truckers' interests in courts and at bringing the concerns of member truckers to the offices of senators, representatives, and to the White House. Complaining of traffic delays, truck operators still wanted the federal government to spend less money on little used rural roads and more money on key routes in and through major cities. During the period 1951-1953, they began a lobbying campaign called PAR, which stood for Project Adequate Roads. (Excellent at adapting their aims to American political culture, leaders of the ATA also understood that every golf player hoped to shoot "par," which was the score that a professional golfer would achieve on a demanding golf course). In spite of their considerable clout, not even leaders of the ATA were capable of jump-starting the Interstate Highway System.

President Eisenhower and the Clay Committee

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who assumed office in 1953, also failed to break the deadlock over who would pay the cost of building the IHS. Like his contemporaries, Eisenhower wanted to reduce traffic jams, and in principle he supported the idea of a new highway system. Construction of the IHS over a long period of time, Eisenhower and his economic advisers believed, would help stimulate the U.S. economy. At the same time, however, Eisenhower did not want a highway funding program that would place too great a financial burden on the federal budget.

In August 1954, Eisenhower asked former U.S. Army General Lucius D. Clay to head a committee that would recommend some way of financing an Interstate Highway System. In January 1955, Clay recommended issuance by the U.S. government of $25 billion in bonds that would be retired over 30 years with funds derived from the federal tax on gasoline and occasional borrowing from the U.S. Treasury. Bond sales to corporations, governments, and private individuals, Clay reasoned, would finance most of the costs of building the IHS without adding to the federal budget or the national debt. Bowing to political reality, Clay proposed that the federal government would pay 90 percent of the costs associated with building the IHS and state governments would pay 10 percent. Up to that point, the federal and state governments had continued to split the costs of highway building on a 50-50 basis.

Some say the IHS vastly improved America; others believe it led to more suburban sprawl, ugliness, and traffic congestion – as here at a bad moment on Interstate 95 near Washington, D.C. Liked or disliked, the system defined American modernity.

Immediately, Clay's plan was attacked by the same interest groups. Leaders of farm groups objected to Clay's plan to freeze spending on local farm roads for a period of 30 years while the bonds were paid off. Equally important, the powerful Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia did not want the federal government to have to pay interest on such a large bond issue.

As an alternative to Clay's ideas, Representative George H. Fallon of Maryland prepared legislation that would have paid directly for highway construction out of the U.S. federal budget. Fallon's bill, however, required a vast increase in gasoline and tire taxes. In July 1955, nearly 500 truckers went to the nation's capital to complain to senators and representatives about Fallon's proposal for higher taxes. On July 27, members of the House of Representatives voted to reject both Clay's proposals and the substitute offered by Fallon. Although the extremely popular President Eisenhower had narrowed the range of debate about highway funding, in this instance he could not translate that popularity into a formula that satisfied the many competitors for highway-construction dollars.

Solution to Deadlock: a Highway Trust Fund

In 1956, Senator Albert Gore Sr., of Tennessee and Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana joined with Representative Fallon to make yet another attempt to pass IHS legislation. The key to their success was in providing a little something for all interests: more spending for rural, urban, and interstate highways, but all this accomplished with only a small increase in gasoline and other automotive and truck taxes. As part of this arrangement, Congress and Eisenhower approved creation of the Highway Trust Fund, which would designate gasoline taxes (and excise taxes on tires and trucks) for exclusive use in financing construction of the IHS and other federal-aid roads. No longer would truck operators complain about gasoline taxes used for non-highway purposes. To build public support for the final agreement, early in 1956 members of the Senate-House conference committee officially changed the name of the IHS to the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Ordinary Americans have called it simply the Interstate Highway System.

Finally, in 1956 Congress and the president formally conferred authority on engineers in the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads and their counterparts in the state highway departments to start the new system by building 41,000 miles, including approximately 5,000 urban miles. True to the promise of IHS enthusiasts, by the late 1980s, the compact IHS carried more than 20 percent of the nation's automobile traffic and a whopping 49 percent of the truck-trailer combinations. In the following decades, Congress approved additional mileage for the IHS, and by 2002 the rural and urban components of the total system stood at 47,742 miles. By early 2004, the federal government had spent more than $59 billion to construct urban portions of the IHS and more than $40 billion to construct the rural sections.

Superhighways now carry Americans ceaselessly day and night, on business or pleasure.

Protests and More Local Control

The construction of a vast new highway system affected the lives of millions of people. While many welcomed the new roads, others disliked them as symbols of runaway modernity that chewed up landscape and/or urban areas. Protests against highway building led Congress to shift control of highway construction away from state and federal engineers. As early as 1959, residents and political leaders in San Francisco blocked construction of the Embarcadero Freeway. Starting in 1962, residents of Baltimore banded together to protect city neighborhoods from destruction by highway engineers. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, upper-income residents of Northwest Washington, D.C., made use of political savvy and legal know-how to block construction of the Three Sisters Bridge across the Potomac River. Authors of books with titles such as The Pavers and the Paved and Superhighway-Superhoax attracted national attention to this "freeway revolt" taking place.

In response to this resistance at the local level, in 1973, Congress and President Richard M. Nixon approved the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which financed local purchase of buses and fixed rail systems with money taken from the formerly inviolable Highway Trust Fund. In 1991, Congress and President George H.W. Bush approved the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). Now, local political leaders in metropolitan planning organizations could have a say in choosing whether to spend a portion of federal and state funds on highways, public transit, bike paths, or other projects. Passage of ISTEA comprised an important element in the devolution of federal highway funds and authority from national and state engineering experts to local politicians.

In this map, the Interstate highway system is limned in blue, showing how it linked the nation.

The construction of the Interstate Highway System produced important consequences in the American future. The vast new ribbons of concrete helped speed up the process whereby millions of Americans moved from central cities to suburbs. By 1970, the United States was already a "suburban nation." Equally important, the system (along with the postwar development of television, public schools, and the existing network of roads) was catalytic in knitting together the economic and social outlooks of more than 290 million persons. Accents, diets, and customs became less regional, more national. Nearly as important, construction of the IHS permitted truck operators to displace the nation's railroads in competition for prompt delivery of food, furniture, refrigerators, and everything else.

While railroads still maintained their own trackbeds, in effect the government had financed truckers' right-of-way. In terms of political consequences, after 1970 the federal highway program was devolved to the states and localities, setting a pattern for similar attempts in areas such as social welfare spending. To this day, the Interstate Highway System remains the nation's greatest public works project. It was a successful intersection between politics and commerce; an experiment that had notable consequences for transportation, urban change, social cohesion, and the reorientation of politics and public policy in the United States.

Mark H. Rose is a professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of more than 30 articles and several books, including: The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century, with Bruce E. Seely and Paul Barrett. Rose is also co-editor of Business, Politics, and Society, a book series published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.