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Dennis Mccann; Taking the; I-Road; the Interstate Highway System Reaches a Golden Milestone

Posted on: Sunday, 5 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By DENNIS MCCANN

I date myself with this one. In a world in which a growing majority don't even remember when televisions came in black and white without clickers, for that matter or cars came with roll-up windows, the birth of the interstate highway system must sound like ancient history.

But some of us lived it. I remember as a child in southern Wisconsin hearing about the fancy new highway being built just outside of town, gobbling up farms and homes along the way, and recall getting in the family car to take a ride on the new I-90 just after it opened. The great round ramps cloverleafs, they were cleverly called seemed so futuristic, and we cruised up the uninterrupted two-lane I-road in style until it was time to turn around and go back.

Today they're a fact of life, dull routes by comparison with winding, quiet roads through nooks and valleys but built for speed and convenience. So far this month alone I have driven I-90 from Madison to Rockford, Ill., I-94 from Madison to Milwaukee, I-39 from southern Wisconsin to where the road ends near Tomahawk and I-15 from Las Vegas to San Diego. It didn't occur to me on any of those rides that this was a big year for the I-system, the golden anniversary of the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation creating the interstate highway system and setting off an unprecedented period of road building across America.

But it is. So happy birthday, I-roads. You're no rustic roads, and you probably deserve the blame for killing Route 66 and other famous open roads, but if a person only wants to get from here to there, you get the job done.

Through the darkest America'

As it happens, Ike was the proper president to start the nation's bulldozer. The legend of the interstate system goes back to 1919, when as an Army lieutenant colonel Eisenhower led a military convoy across the country from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, in part to demonstrate the need for good roads. They did that by taking 56 days to travel the 3,250-mile route across rough roads that were the norm in those days. Eisenhower described it as a journey "through the darkest America with truck and tank," which surely didn't please chambers of commerce along the way but which did underscore the need for better highways.

It took time to build them, however. Gen. John Pershing proposed the first route plan in 1923, but interest waned until the late 1930s, when it revived only to be delayed because of World War II. In 1944, Congress approved plans for a system of highways up to 40,000 miles long "to connect by routes, direct as practical, the principal metropolitan areas, cities and industrial centers to serve the National Defense . . ."

Of course even with the defense emphasis, the plans came with no money attached. The first funding was not approved until 1954, and the system didn't really go from plans on paper to pavement on the ground until Ike signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act on June 29, 1956, setting off four-lane frenzy.

Wisconsin's first project

"The old convoy had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways," Eisenhower said once, "but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land."

Missouri, Kansas and Pennsylvania all claim the first completed portions of the new system, according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, which is a name almost as long as an I-road. In Wisconsin, the first segment to begin construction was on Highway 18 between Goerkes Corners and County SS, and the first completed mile of I-94 was near Johnson Creek.

By 1957 the Wisconsin State Highway Commission's annual report touted the new roads as possessing "a capacity, durability, grandeur and sweep exceeding all previous highway concepts." Seventy percent of the state system was completed between 1959 and 1969, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society's account of I-history.

Longest and shortest

Today there are 743 miles of interstate in Wisconsin. I-90 and I- 94 came first, followed by I-43 and, more recently, I-39 from Madison north through Stevens Point and Wausau, though most motorists at least I do still think of it as Highway 51.

If you want to drive them all in this anniversary year, be warned there are 46,773 total miles in the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, as it is bureaucratically known. The longest is I-90 from Boston to Seattle, at 3,020.54 miles, and the shortest two-digit interstate is from Emery to Greensboro in North Carolina, just 12.27 miles. Texas has the most interstate miles, followed by California, and 45 of 50 state capitals are on the I-system.

To mark the big anniversary, the 1919 convoy will be re-created, but in reverse so that the official celebration can take place in Washington on June 29 at the very mile marker where Eisenhower's convoy departed for San Francisco.

The convoy will pass through 11 states, but Wisconsin will not be one of them. Still, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is planning to highlight the history of the system on its Web site and on commemorative posters, according to Pat Schmitt of the office of public affairs. An event is being planned here for June 29 as well.

I suppose I could attend, or I could just watch the highlights on TV. I have one now that comes in color, and you can change channels by pushing a button from across the room. Amazing.

Just to make a point, though, maybe the commemoration ought to be held on a rustic road.

Fascinating four-lane factoids

If transportation trips your trigger and highways put hum in your heart, you can find a daily history note on the interstate system, along with other information, at www.interstate50th.org.

Similar information and history notes, along with lists of road movies, road songs and then-and-now pop culture comparisons, can be found at the Federal Highway Administration at www.fhwa.dot.gov/ interstate/homepage.cfm.

The Wisconsin Historical Society's look at I-history in Wisconsin is at www.wisconsinhistory.org/archstories/late_roads/ interstate_system.asp.

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E-mail dmccann@journalsentinel.com.

Copyright 2006, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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