Jun 22, 2019 3 min read

“Get your motor runnin’. Head out on the highway! Lookin’ for adventure. And whatever comes our way!” – “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf

This week (June 29) in 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act, and it is hard to imagine another piece of legislation so in tune with the American character. We Americans love our freedom and we love our cars, and the Federal Highway Act facilitated both. The largest public works project in American history up to that time, it earmarked $30 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways to be built across America over a 10-year period.

There had been several previous attempts to pass legislation creating a federal highway system, but political infighting had derailed them. It was not until Eisenhower became president that the momentum shifted. Eisenhower was a firm supporter of a federal highway system, in great part because he had traveled – or rather crawled in frustration – across America in a motor convoy as a young man. That convoy was plagued by washed-out bridges, impassable roads that ranged from muddy to icy, and numerous dead ends that left them stranded.

But his experiences as commander of the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany in 1944 also convinced Eisenhower of the need for an interstate highway system. Eisenhower realized that the one thing Adolf Hitler had gotten right was building the nationwide German autobahn system, which facilitated the rapid transport of German cars, but also trucks, soldiers and military equipment across Germany. To that end, Eisenhower argued that an interstate highway legislation would enhance America’s defense capabilities – it would allow the same rapid movement of troops and military equipment should America ever be attacked.

The one political obstacle was over who would pay for construction of this interstate highway network, and how would the revenue be raised to pay it. In the final bill, the Feds agreed to pay 90 percent of the costs, with revenues to be raised through taxes on fuel, while the states agreed to pay the remaining 10 percent through a variety of revenues, including toll booths.

The rest is history. The new highway system also helped create countless new industries – including fast-food restaurants, hotel/motel chains and even theme parks and amusement parks. It also so greatly facilitated the transfer of goods and services by highway that the trucking industry soon overtook the railroad industry as the number one deliverer of goods. It even connected rural areas to the rest of the country.

“More than any single action by the government since the end of the war,” Eisenhower wrote with remarkable foresight in his memoirs, “this one would change the face of America.”

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net.