“… and you may ask yourself, where does that highway go to?” — Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime
“Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything. From the Interstate, America is all steel guardrails and plastic signs, and every place looks and feels and sounds and smells like every other place.” — Charles Kuralt, On the Road with Charles Kuralt
“Life doesn’t happen along the interstates. It’s against the law.” — William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
Montana
Florida This web site is intended to be a historical resource, dedicated to the preservation and celebration of the US numbered highway system. The American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Public Roads, laid out the US highway system along primary intercity roads of the day. Preliminary planning of routes to be included began in 1924. A list of proposed route numbers was ready in late 1925. The final list of US highways was agreed upon on November 11, 1926. In the early years, auto-tourists followed the US routes like they had the Auto-Trails. During the Great Depression, the U.S. and state governments put men to work improving and extending the nation’s roads and highways. The US highway system carried the bulk of intercity vehicular traffic and people migrating west to California. These highways helped the US win the Second World War, allowing great flexibility in ferrying men and materials across the nation, supplementing the nation’s fixed rail system. After the war, highways swelled with cars mass produced in factories tooled up to supply wartime needs. Roads built in the 1930’s were inadequate for the faster and wider cars of the 1950’s. Roads were widened, straightened, and divided. It was not enough. With Germany’s Autobahns as an example of the highways Americans wanted, President Eisenhower signed a bill creating the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways on June 29, 1956. “Future Interstate” shields cropped up like weeds as the new superhighways were built along or on top of US routes. The plan was for both systems to co-exist, maintaining established travel routes. California started the process of relegating US highways to a lesser place in modern life on July 1, 1964 with the decommissioning or truncation of most of its US routes. Others have cited the removal of the last traffic light on I-90 in Wallace, Idaho on September 15, 1991 as the Interstate System’s completion because the original 1956 plan super slabs were now in place. In my opinion, the decertifying of the famed Route 66 on June 27, 1985 was that moment. Now someone could go from Chicago to Los Angeles without seeing landmarks like the Blue Swallow Motel, Roy’s Cafe, or Lucille’s Service Station. US 66 was replaced by five Interstate numbers in addition to numerous state routes: I-55, I-44, I-40, I-15, and I-10. No single official highway number currently carries traffic between Chicago, IL and Los Angeles, CA, despite the fact that a single highway number linking those two cities had been a priority since US route planning began in 1925. The experts believe that a single number connection between two cities is no longer important. Now, over a decade after its …