Previous Interstate Facts of the Day

• January 1, 2008:   Earthmoving #1:  From William R. Haycraft’s Yellow Steel:  The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry (University of Illinois Press, 2002) on the 1956 Act:  “The manufacturers, expecting immediate increases in the amount of highway work let to contract, were euphoric.  But these expectations proved premature.  What they failed to reckon on were the long leadtimes entailed in major highway projects… The fact was that, initially, a disproportionate amount of the funds available would have to be spent for right-of-way acquisition.”  [Page 144]
  
• January 2, 2008:   Earthmoving #2:  From William R. Haycraft’s Yellow Steel:  The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry (University of Illinois Press, 2002):  “By the end of 1965 interstate highway construction was at a peak.  After a little less than ten years of work, 21,185 miles—52 percent of the system—were already open to traffic.  The program had been a bonanza to contractors and the construction equipment industry alike, but it was a wasting asset.  When it was complete some ten years hence, what would follow?”  [Page 187]
  
• January 3, 2008:   Earthmoving #3:  From William R. Haycraft’s Yellow Steel:  The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry (University of Illinois Press, 2002) on passage of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, which increased the Federal gas tax by a nickel (4 cents for highways, 1 cent for transit) to restore the condition of aging Interstate and other roads and bridges:  “The program brought about a huge reorientation of the American roads industry.  It went from new construction, which is highly machinery-intensive, to repair, resurfacing, and reconstruction, which are costly but much less machinery-intensive… The highway program would never again generate the massive sales of heavy construction equipment it once did.” [page 245]
  
• January 4, 2008:   Earthmoving #4:  From William R. Haycraft’s Yellow Steel:  The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry (University of Illinois Press, 2002) on legislation in the 1980s through the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, which established the post-Interstate era: “[Despite] a shift away from the massive earthmoving of the 1960s and 1970s to build the Interstate System, highways in the 1980s and 1990s continued to be the primary engine that drove the heavy construction industry in the United States, albeit with somewhat different types of equipment.”  [page 303]
  
• January 5, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 1 of 8: Under President Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin submitted a report to Congress in April 1808 “respecting roads and canals.” The report contained the first national inventory of roads and canals, but also proposed that Congress approve “early and efficient aid of the Federal Government” for national construction of roads, canals, and inland navigation. The great program would cost $20 million and take 10 years. No other program open to the Federal Government would do more “to strengthen and perpetuate that Union which secures external independence, domestic peace, and internal liberty.” Congress did not act on this visionary proposal.
  
• January 6, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 2 of 8: After the chartering of a second National Bank in 1816, Representative John C. Calhoun (SC) headed a special committee that proposed to invest the annual dividends the Federal Government would receive from the bank as a “bonus” for the construction of roads and canals in each State, with State consent. He told Congress: “Let us then bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space.” The Bonus Bill passed the Congress and was forwarded to President James Madison, who vetoed it on March 3, 1817, his last day in office, because he did not think it was constitutional.
  
• January 7, 2008:   If you’re traveling I-80 across Nebraska, there’s more than one reason to stop at a safety rest area, namely a 500-mile Sculpture Garden. It isn’t visible from the roadway, but the sculpture garden can be seen in nine of the rest areas along I-80, each with a unique metal and stone creation. The “Museum Without Walls” was dedicated in July 1976 as part of the State’s Bicentennial celebration. The nine rest areas are: the Nebraska/Omaha Travel Information Center near U.S. 73/75; Platte River eastbound; Blue River eastbound; York westbound; Grand Island eastbound; Kearney westbound; Brady westbound; Ogallala westbound; and the Sidney westbound.
  
• January 8, 2008:   Yesterday’s I-Fact discussed the 500-mile long Sculpture Garden installed in nine safety rest areas along Nebraska’s I-80. That same stretch of Nebraska’s I-80 includes the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, which spans I-80 at Kearney as a tribute to the 19^th century pioneers who passed through the region on their way to a new life in the west. The arch, the largest object ever transported in Nebraska, is 309 feet long, three stories high, and weighs 1,500 tons. It was rolled into place over the Interstate in August 1999 and dedicated in 2000. The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument contains a 20,000-square foot walk-through exhibit about the Oregon, Mormon, and California Trails; the Pony Express; and the Overland Stage, as well as the Transcontinental Railroad and the Lincoln Highway.
  
• January 9, 2008:   I-88, Part 1 of 2: I-88 consists of two unconnected segments, one in New York and one in Illinois. In New York, I-88 is 117 miles long from I-90 (New York State Thruway) in Schenectady to I-81 in Binghamton. It was added to the Interstate System on December 13, 1968, after Congress authorized the U.S. Department of Transportation to designate an additional 1,500 miles. Construction of I-88 in New York was completed in 1989. Originally called the Susquehanna Expressway, I-88 was renamed the Senator Warren M. Anderson Expressway. Anderson, who lived in Binghamton, was a State Senator from 1953 through 1988 and served as Majority Leader of the State Senate from 1973 to 1988. He was instrumental in securing construction of the freeway.
  
• January 10, 2008:   I-88, Part 2 of 2: I-88 consists of two unconnected segments, one in New York and one in Illinois. In Illinois, I-88 is 140 miles long from I-290 at Hillside in the Chicago metropolitan area to I-80 near Moline in the Quad Cities area. The route was built without Interstate Construction funds prior to Interstate designation. The first section from I-290 to Aurora opened as the East-West Tollway on November 21, 1958. An extension to Fulton on the Mississippi River was studied in the 1960s, with the road to be called the Lincoln Tollway. The extension opened in stages in 1974, with the final toll section¾Rochelle to Rock Falls¾opening on November 15, 1974. The continuation to the Quad Cities was built as a non-toll facility. In June 1987, the Federal Highway Administration designated I-88 in Illinois as an existing road that met Interstate standards. In 2004, the State named I-88 the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway because the route passes just south of Dixon, the former President’s boyhood hometown.
  
• January 11, 2008:   One of the most controversial issues facing Congress in 1955/1956 was what to do about the toll and non-toll highways that had been built or were underway in Interstate corridors before the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Section 114 of the 1956 Act compromised by calling for a study by the Department of Commerce. Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks transmitted Consideration for Reimbursement for Certain Highways on the Interstate System to Congress on January 7, 1958. The report found that the 38,548 miles of approved detailed locations on the Interstate System as of September 1957 included 1,950 miles of toll roads in 26 States and 8,909 miles of non-toll roads in 47 States. Of the combined 10,859-miles, completed miles totaled only 1,955 miles. The report estimated that if Congress decided to reimburse the States for this mileage (minus depreciation), the cost would be $5.92 billion, of which $2.52 billion was for toll roads. Congress took no action on the report at the time.
  
• January 12, 2008:   Fun With Numbers: In Interstate number assignments, which are grouped in tens, the “70s” and “80s” are the only ones where all variations are in use (I-70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, and 79; and I-80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86. 87, 88, and 89). The fewest numbers used in this grouping of Interstate numbers by the tens are from 1 to 9 (I-4, 5, and 8) and 50 to 59 (I-55, 57, and 59).
  
• January 13, 2008:   I-55 is a 964-mile route from U.S. 41 in Chicago, Illinois, to I-10 in La Place, Louisiana. Tennessee has the fewest miles of I-55, only 12 miles cutting through Memphis. Illinois has more I-55 mileage, 313 miles, than the other States. I-55 parallels the Mississippi River and crosses it twice. The route is carried across the river (along with I-64 and I-70) between Illinois and Missouri on the Poplar Street Bridge, which opened on November 9, 1967. I-55 also crosses the Mississippi River on the Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge. Opened in 1950, the Bridge is the only Interstate bridge in Tennessee that is included in the National Register of Historic Places.
  
• January 14, 2008:   The longest stretch of a multi-State Interstate in one State can be found in Texas. I-10, the 2,460-mile transcontinental route from I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida, to CA 1 in Santa Monica, California, includes 881 miles in Texas from Orange in the east to El Paso in the west. The second longest stretch of a multi-State Interstate is in California, with 796 miles of 1,380-mile I-5. The States in the remaining Top 5 slots:
  • Texas: 636 miles of I-20
  • Montana: 552 miles of I-90
  • Texas: 504 miles of I-35
  
  
• January 15, 2008:   The Indiana Toll Road carries I-90 across the State border to border. The turnpike also carries I-80 from the eastern State line to a point near Burns Harbor, where I-80 shifts to the toll-free Frank J. Borman Expressway, which also carries I-94. (Borman, an astronaut who was born in Gary, Indiana, was Commander of Apollo 8, the first NASA mission to orbit the moon.) The $280-million turnpike was dedicated on September 17, 1956, with a ceremony at South Bend that featured high school bands, a parade, and speeches by Governor George N. Craig and other dignitaries. The final 15 miles connecting Gary with Illinois opened on November 15.
  
• January 16, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 3 of 8: General Roy Stone, a Civil War hero, headed the first Federal road agency, the U.S. Office of Road Inquiry, when it went into operation in the Department of Agriculture on October 3, 1893. In an 1895 address to the Tennessee Road Convention, he proposed: “A great national highway . . . called perhaps The Great Road of America, which should first join together the States along the Atlantic seaboard; then strike across the country on a central line, say from Washington to San Francisco, joining there another line which connects the States of the Pacific Coast . . . ” He did not expect the Great Road—which looks like a wide “H” on a map—to be built in his lifetime; it was intended to inspire the Nation to dream: “It is often easier to do great things than small ones of the same kind, and what the Government undertakes in this regard should be something big enough to excite the imagination and stir the pride and patriotism of the country—something that will put us in respect of roads as far ahead of other nations as we have been behind them heretofore.”
  
• January 17, 2008:   Mississippi River Interstate Quiz: How many times does the Interstate System cross the Mississippi River? How many of the seven east-west Interstates with two-digit numbers ending in zero cross the Mississippi River? How many of the ten north-south Interstates with one-or two-digit numbers ending in 5 cross the Mississippi River? How many Interstates cross the Mississippi River more than once? What bridge carries the lowest Interstate number across the river? The highest? How many are named after former members of the U.S. House of Representatives? The answers in tomorrow’s Interstate Facts of the Day.
  
• January 18, 2008:   Mississippi River Interstate Quiz: Here are the answers to yesterday’s Interstate Facts of the Day quiz:

  How many times does the Interstate System cross the Mississippi River?
  20

  How many of the seven east-west Interstates with two-digit numbers ending in zero cross the Mississippi River?
  Six (I-10, 20, 40, 70, 80, and 90).

  How many of the ten north-south Interstates with one-or two-digit numbers ending in 5 cross the Mississippi River?
  Three (I-35W, I-35E, and I-55).

  How many Interstates cross the Mississippi River more than once?
  One (I-55 at Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri. A case could be made for I-35, but it crosses on separate alignments as I-35W and I-35E).

  What bridge carries the lowest number across the river?
  I-10/Horace Wilkinson Bridge at Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

  What bridge carries the highest number across the river?
  I-694 north of Minneapolis.

  How many are named after former members of the U.S. House of Representatives?
  Two (I-80/Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge and I-310/Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge).

  
  
• January 19, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 4 of 8: Through the mid-1910s, many Members of Congress proposed highway networks. Many bills proposed construction of a national "Interstate" highway system, with the routes specified in the bills and, in some cases, given names. For example, Senator Shelby Cullom (R-Ill.) introduced a bill calling for seven national highways that, in keeping with his understanding of the ancient Roman highway network, all began in the Nation's capital. Some bills involved a specific road proposal, such as a national highway from the Canadian border south of Winnipeg to Galveston, Texas, and a national ocean-to-ocean highway over the pioneer trails of the Nation. The Congress was not ready for such schemes.
  
• January 20, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 5 of 8: Charles Henry Davis, a wealthy road equipment manufacturer who lived in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, formed the National Highways Association in 1911. In 1912, the association published a map of a 50,000-mile network of what Davis called "a broad and comprehensive system of National Highways [to be] built, owned, and maintained by the National Government." He recognized that “the unthinking” might consider it “a revolutionary idea,” but "nothing was ever accomplished without a beginning being made somewhere." Although his ideas were rejected (even scorned at times), Davis would live long enough to see the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorize a “National System of Interstate Highways.” He also lived to see the Federal Works Agency/Public Roads Administration designate the initial Interstate routes on August 2, 1947—on a map that included many of the routes shown on his 1912 map. Davis, a man who embraced many causes with great enthusiasm, died on June 2, 1951.
  
• January 21, 2008:   Oklahoma completed its 236-mile portion of I-35 with the snip of a four-inch wide ribbon at Wynnewood on February 19, 1971. Wielding the scissors was Governor David Hall. As the Oklahoma City Times put it in a headline: “City to Dallas: Swoosh!” The article began, “A 16-year old dream came true today,” explaining that, “Compared with old U.S. 77, the new highway cuts the distance [to Dallas] only 12 miles. But the saving in frazzled nerves is immeasurable.” Between Oklahoma City and the Texas State line, the biggest obstacle to completion had been the Arbuckle Mountains. Historian William Paul Corbett, in his Ph.D thesis on Oklahoma highway development, explained that using ammonium nitrate, workers “blasted a six-mile long trench at one point to a depth of 150 feet through the bowels of the mountains, removing more than 3,200,000 cubic yards of material.” The result was “a roadbed with a long, wide, gradually sloping four percent uphill grade as opposed to the twisting, narrow five percent inclines on nearby U.S. Highway 77.” (Oklahoma’s Highways: Indian Trails to Urban Expressways, Oklahoma State University, 1982, unpublished.)
  
• January 22, 2008:   Former President Harry S. Truman participated in the opening of a five-mile segment of the Southeast Freeway (I-70) in Kansas City, Missouri, on August 17, 1962. “I know something of this project,” the former President said, “I wanted it built 30 years ago” when he was the presiding judge of the Jackson County Court (an executive, not a judicial position). Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton, a former Missouri State highway engineer, said, “We are dedicating this fine new freeway to the people, for their benefit and pleasure.” His wife, Callie Maud Whitton, snipped the ribbon formally opening the expressway, a 35-car motorcade toured the route.
  
• January 23, 2008:   Asphalt has been used for pavement on 47 percent (21,717 miles) of the Interstate System. Concrete pavements equal 28 percent of the total (13,226) miles. In addition, the Interstate System includes 11,703 miles (25 percent) of “composite” pavement (asphalt overlay on a concrete base).
  
• January 24, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 6 of 8: By the 1930s, several proposals for a single massive superhighway across the country were popular. T.E. Steiner, a manufacturer from Wooster, Ohio, proposed one of the most publicized ideas, a Transcontinental Stream-Lined Super Highway stretching 4,000 miles from Plymouth Rock on the Atlantic Ocean to a point just south of San Francisco. It would be as straight as possible, with the roadway including four lanes for automobiles, four lanes for trucks and buses, and room for emergency parking, landscaping, and other purposes. Right-of-way would be 450 feet wide, except that every 10 or 20 miles, the right-of-way would be 3,000 feet wide to accommodate leasing sites for recreation centers, hotels, restaurants, and gasoline stations. Because detailed traffic surveys demonstrated that transcontinental traffic was too small to justify such schemes, Chief Thomas H. MacDonald of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads and his top aide, Herbert S. Fairbank, scorned transcontinental schemes that were so far in excess of need.
  
• January 25, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 7 of 8: Although proposals for a single massive superhighway across the country were popular in the 1930s, an alternative concept, advocated by several Members of Congress, proposed construction of a limited network of toll superhighways. The best known proposal was introduced as a bill by Senator Robert J. Bulkley (D-Ohio) in 1938 with the support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The bill called for creation of a United States Highway Corporation to build three toll transcontinental and seven north-south superhighways, linked by spurs and connectors. In view of the President’s support, Congress included a provision in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 asking the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads to study the concept. The resulting report, the 1939 Toll Roads and Free Roads, rejected the idea of a limited toll network, but advocated a toll-free express highway network that evolved into the Interstate System.
  
• January 25, 2008:   Pre-Interstates, Part 8 of 8: The most popular exhibit at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 and 1940 was Futurama in the General Motors building. It was a seven-acre model of an interstate network as it might exist in 1960. Visitors seated in armchairs were transported over the exhibit for "a magic Aladdin-like flight through time and space." Fourteen-lane highways crossed the country as thousands of model cars moved at three prescribed speeds up to 100 mph, while observers in towers provided electronic signals to help motorists shift lanes or enter/leave the highway. Vehicle spacing was controlled by radio beams at the front and back of each car. Although visitors leaving the exhibit were given lapel pins reading I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE, Chief Thomas H. MacDonald of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads considered Futurama a collection of "bizarre ideas." As he and top aide Herbert S. Fairbank prepared the 1939 report to Congress that first described the future Interstate System (Tolls Roads and Free Roads) they avoided such visionary “superhighway” schemes in favor of concepts supported by data collected in highway traffic surveys.
  
• January 26, 2008:   The 1953 Kansas State Legislature approved creation of the Kansas Turnpike Authority. The authority considered several routes before settling on a basic routing of Kansas City-to-Topeka (future I-70), Topeka-to-Wichita (I-325 to Emporia and then I-35 the rest of the way), and from Wichita to a link at the border with the planned Oklahoma Turnpike (I-35). The estimated cost was $160 million. On December 31, 1954, Governor Edward Arn climbed onto a steam shovel to break ground for construction of the turnpike. The 236-mile Kansas Turnpike was completed on October 21, 1956, although ceremonies took place on October 25 at three locations. At the eastern terminus, the singing cowboy star, Gene Autry, and his horse Champion burst through a huge paper map of the turnpike to celebrate the opening. The British Poet Laureate, John Masefield, offered this ode to the turnpike:
  
  May this Road’s Angels Blessedly fulfill
  The inmost Hope of travelers of good will.
  May those who seek Love, find; those Knowledge, learn.
  To all, gay going-forth and glad return.
  
  
• January 27, 2008:   Future Interstates, Part 1 of 2: Starting in the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995, Congress has identified 12 "future Interstates" among the 77 High Priority Corridors of the National Highway System, as well as portions of two other corridors. The 12 future Interstates are listed here (I-numbers in parenthesis if specified by Congress):
  • North-South Corridor from Kansas City, Missouri, to Shreveport, Louisiana.
  • U.S. 220 and the Appalachian Thruway Corridor from Business 220 in Bedford, Pennsylvania, to the vicinity of Corning New York, including U.S. 322 between U.S. 220 and I-80 (I-99).
  • I-69 Corridor from Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, through Port Huron, Michigan southwesterly along I-69 through Indianapolis, Indiana, extended through Evansville, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Mississippi, Arkansas, Shreveport/Bossier, Louisiana, to Houston, Texas, and to the Lower Rio Grande at the Border (I-69).
  • U.S. 59 Corridor from Laredo through Houston, Texas, in the vicinity of Texarkana, Texas (I-69).
  • New York and Pennsylvania State Route 17 from Harriman, New York, to its intersection with I-90 in Pennsylvania (I-86).
  • U.S. 90 Corridor from I-49 in Lafayette, Louisiana, to I-10 in New Orleans.
  • The Greensboro Corridor from Danville, Virginia, to Greensboro, North Carolina, along U.S. 29.
  • The portion of Corridor V of the Appalachian Development Highway System from I-55 near Batesville, Mississippi, to the intersection with Corridor X near Fulton, Mississippi.
  • U.S. 78 Corridor from Memphis, Tennessee, to Corridor X of the Appalachian Development Highway System near Fulton, Mississippi, and Corridor X extending from near Fulton to near Birmingham, Alabama (I-22).
  To be continued in the next Interstate Fact of the Day.
  
• January 28, 2008:   Yesterday, the Interstate Fact of the Day began a list of High Priority Corridors of the National Highway System that Congress has designated "future Interstates." The remaining "future Interstates" (showing the route number in parenthesis where specified by Congress) are:
  • The California Farm-to-Market Corridor, California State Route 99 from south of Bakersfield to Sacramento, California.
  • U.S. 41 Corridor between Interstate Route 94 via Interstate Route 894 and Highway 45 near Milwaukee and I-43 near Green Bay in the State of Wisconsin.
  • I-376 from the Pittsburgh interchange (I/C No. 56) of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, westward on I-279, U.S. 22, U.S. 30, PA 60 continuing past the Pittsburgh International Airport, PA Turnpike Route 60 past the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76) interchange 10, and continuing north on PA 60 to I-80 (I-376).
  Congress also designated portions of two other High Priority Corridors as "future Interstates":
  • East-West Transamerica Corridor from Virginia to California, but the "future Interstate" portion is in Kentucky centered on the cities of Pikeville, Jenkins, Hazard, London, and Somerset; then, generally following the Louie B. Nunn Parkway corridor from Somerset to Columbia, to Glasgow, to I-65; then to Bowling Green, Hopkinsville, Benton, and Paducah (I-66)
  • I-73/74 North-South Corridor from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan to Charleston, South Carolina, but only the portion from Portsmouth, Ohio, south on combined and separate routes through West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina to Georgetown, South Carolina, is designated as "future Interstate."
  
  
• January 29, 2008:   On June 29, 1990, North Carolina opened the final link in I-40, a 2,554-mile highway from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Barstow, California. The rolling festivities included remarks by Governor James G. Martin (who called I-40 "North Carolina's Main Street"), 900 pounds of free barbecue, a military band, cheerleaders from Hobbton High School, and a descent by the Ft. Bragg's Green Beret Sport Parachute Team at the NC-50/55 interchange at Newton Grove; an ice cream social at the I-40/NC-24 rest area west of Warsaw, and a final ceremony at Grace Baptist Church near the eastern terminus in Wilmington. In 1958, the first Interstate-funded construction on I-40 nationwide had taken place in Haywood County, North Carolina. Total cost of I-40: $3.3 billion.
  
• January 30, 2008:   The I-70 Eisenhower/Johnson Memorial Tunnel in Colorado is the longest Interstate tunnel and the System's highest point above sea level (11,013 feet (east bore), 11,158 feet (west bore)). The westbound bore (completed March 8, 1973) is named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, while the eastbound bore (completed December 21, 1979) is named after former Senator and Colorado Governor Edwin C. Johnson, who had fought hard to secure the Interstate mileage west of Denver. (The lowest elevation on the Interstate System is I-8 in El Centro, California, 52 feet below sea level.)
  
• January 31, 2008:   On June 26, 1956, after both Houses of Congress approved the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the two chief authors, Senator Al Gore, Sr. (D-Tn) and Representative George H. Fallon (D-Md.) issued a joint statement saying the bill would set in motion "the greatest governmental construction program in the history of the world." Representative Fallon added:

  The American people will ride safely upon many thousands of miles of broad, straight, trouble-free roads, four to eight lanes wide, criss-crossing America from coast to coast and border to border, built to the very highest standards that our highway engineers can devise.

  
  
• February 1, 2008:   Rhode Island was the first State to open all of its Interstate mileage, 70.8 miles, in June 1975. Of the States with larger amounts of mileage, Nebraska was the first to open all of its 481.5 miles of Interstate System (November 1976).
  
• February 2, 2008:   During debate on the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, Senator Steve Symms (R-Id.) said, "I think in general, the Interstate and Defense Highway System has been one of the best Federal projects we have ever seen in terms of opening up commerce, industry, and opportunity and personal freedom for Americans."
  
• February 3, 2008:   Secretary of Transportation Samuel K. Skinner submitted the final Interstate Cost Estimate (ICE) to Congress on February 4, 1991. The ICE, which was used to apportion Interstate Construction funds based on needs in each State, estimated that the total cost of the Interstate System would be $128.9 billion, with a Federal share of $114.3 billion. Of this amount, $12.9 billion remained to be expended (Federal share: $11.7 billion).
  
• February 4, 2008:   Vermont's first Interstate highway, a section of I-91 from the Massachusetts State line to Brattleboro, opened on November 1, 1958. Besides being Vermont's first Interstate, it was the first highway in the State with full control of access and a four-lane divided design.
  
• February 5, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on December 20, 1944, authorized designation of a 40,000-mile "National System of Interstate Highways." On August 2, 1947, Commissioner of Public Roads, Thomas H. MacDonald, and the Federal Works Administrator, Major General Philip B. Fleming, designated 37,681 miles of principal highways, including 2,882 miles carrying the routes through cities. The remaining mileage, used for urban circumferential and distributing routes, was approved on September 15, 1955.
  
• February 6, 2008:   The longest Interstate highway is I-90, stretching 3,085 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, to Seattle, Washington. However, I-90 is not the Nation's longest road. That would be U.S. 20, a 3,365-mile route from Boston, Massachusetts, to Newport, Oregon.
  
• February 7, 2008:   North Dakota's first completed section of the Interstate System was dedicated on October 16, 1958. Located between Jamestown and Valley City, the 40-mile section of I-94 was opened with a ceremony at the Eckelson interchange, with Governor John E. Davis cutting the ribbon.
  
• February 8, 2008:   In 1975, the American Society of Civil Engineers presented a Special Civil Engineering Achievement Award to the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways during a ceremony on the Ellipse south of the White House. Identical plaques were presented to Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman, Jr., and William S. Ritchie, Jr., president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. The twin plaques were representative of the Federal-State relationship that built the Interstate System.
  
• February 9, 2008:   It is NOT true that one-in-five miles of the Interstate System must be straight so airplanes can land. This widespread myth has no basis in law, regulation, design manual, or fact. Airplanes occasionally land on Interstates, not because the Interstates are designed for that purpose, but because no alternative is available in an emergency.
  
• February 10, 2008:   I-80 across Pennsylvania was completed with a ceremony on September 17, 1970, at the Milesburg interchange. At the time, the highway was known as the Keystone Shortway, but was renamed the Z. H. Confair Memorial Highway in 1984 to honor State Senator Confair, who had promoted construction of the road as president of the Keystone Shortway Association.
  
• February 11, 2008:   The 1.7-mile, $112-million I-70 Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel opened in Colorado on March 8, 1973. During a brief ceremony about 500 feet inside the tunnel's entrance west of Denver, Governor John Love said, "This tunnel, as part of the Interstate System, represents the most recent, and possibly the most effective, answer to tying east and west Colorado together and opening the way west."
  
• February 12, 2008:   To help resolve urban Interstate controversies, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 provided that a Governor and the local governments concerned could request withdrawal of unbuilt Interstate routes or portions thereof in an urbanized area. The Department of Transportation could withdraw approval if the withdrawn segment was not essential to completion of a unified and connected System. Transit projects in or serving the same urbanized area could be substituted, with funds from the general Treasury in an amount equal to the Federal share of the withdrawn facility. (The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1976 allowed substitution of highway projects in addition to transit projects.) The first withdrawal was approved for Boston's Inner Belt (I-95 and I-695) on May 23, 1974, and the final approval occurred on September 22, 1989 (bus lanes on I-205 in Portland, Oregon). In all, a total of 50 actions involved withdrawal of 343 miles of Interstate highways in 21 States.
  
• February 13, 2008:   The Interstate System includes 55,512 bridges and 82 tunnels (including 104 individual bores).
  
• February 14, 2008:   Texas has more Interstate miles than any State (3,233 miles), but New York has the most Interstate Routes (29).
  
• February 15, 2008:   Ohio completed its Interstate mileage on September 19, 2003, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the final three segments of the I-670 Spring-Sandusky-Interchange Project in downtown Columbus. The $225 million project included 15 projects to widen, reconstruct, and complete I-670 to improve safety and access where I-670, SR 315, and U.S. 33 meet.
  
• February 16, 2008:   Although Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to the present have supported the Interstate System, only one President has participated in the opening of an Interstate highway. On November 14, 1963, President John F. Kennedy helped cut the ribbon for the opening of the Maryland Northeastern Expressway-Delaware Turnpike on I-95. Eight days later, on November 22, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Officials in Delaware and Maryland renamed the turnpike the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway.
  
• February 17, 2008:   The magazine Invention and Technology said: "The Interstate system works, in fact, it has exceeded its original scope and mission by revolutionizing the Nation's logistics, changing the way we travel, and knitting the country's regions closer together. Thanks to constant redesign and reconstruction, the Interstate remains a vital part of the U.S. economy." [Daniel J. McConville, "Seaway to Nowhere," Invention and Technology, Fall 1995]
  
• February 18, 2008:   The Interstate System has had four statutory names. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 called it the National System of Interstate Highways. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 amended the name to: National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Public Law 101-427, signed by President George H. W. Bush on October 15, 1990, renamed the Interstate System the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Section 1005 of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 amended the name by restoring the word "National" after the former President's name. As a result, the official name of the Interstate System is: the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
  
• February 19, 2008:   In 1976, Life magazine published a Bicentennial Issue on "The 100 Events that Shaped America." No. 96 was the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The accompanying article explained that the 1956 Act "aimed at nothing less than tying the whole continent together with a continuous network of limited-access superhighways." The Interstate System is "the most grandiose and indelible signature that Americans have ever scratched across the face of their land."
  
• February 20, 2008:   Which Interstate highway crosses the most States? The answer is I-95, which crosses 15 States and the District of Columbia: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, the District, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. The route that crosses the second most States is I-90: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.
  
• February 21, 2008:   The Interstate System includes seven border-to-border routes:
  • I-5, San Diego, California, to Blaine, Washington (1,382.04 miles)
  • I-15, San Diego to Sweet Grass, Montana (1,436.89 miles)
  • I-35, Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minnesota (1,831.43 miles)
  • I-55, New Orleans, Louisiana, to Chicago, Illinois (943.69 miles)
  • I-65, Mobile, Alabama, to Gary, Indiana (888.08 miles)
  • I-75, Miami, Florida, to Sault Ste Marie, Michigan (1,787.49 miles)
  • I-95, Miami to Houlton, Maine (1,892.76 miles)
  
  
• February 22, 2008:   The Interstate System connects all but five State capitals. Those not directly served are Juneau, Alaska; Dover, Delaware; Jefferson City, Missouri; Carson City, Nevada; and Pierre, South Dakota.
  
• February 23, 2008:   The Central Artery/Tunnel Project ("The Big Dig") in Boston, Massachusetts, is the biggest project in Interstate history. However, it is actually several projects combined into one. The key elements are extension of I-90 to Logan International Airport and replacement of the elevated I-93/Central Artery viaduct with a tunnel that was built under the existing viaduct that continued to serve hundreds of thousands of vehicles every day. These two key elements required construction of a new Charles River crossing (the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge), a new interchange complex for I-90/I-93; and two tunnels for the I-90 extension (one across the Fort Point Channel and another across Boston Harbor to the airport).
  
• February 24, 2008:   Representative George H. Fallon (D-Md) was committed to advancing the Federal-aid highway program throughout his House career (1945-1970). As chairman of the Subcommittee on Roads in 1955-56, he was one of the chief authors of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and a Founding Father of the Interstate System. Based on an interview with Fallon on July 17, 1974, Professor Gary T. Schwartz reported that, "There is irony in this, since Fallon dislikes driving—freeway driving especially." ("Urban Freeways and the Interstate System," Southern California Law Review, Vol. 49.406, March 1976, page 434.)
  
• February 25, 2008:   In 1970, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a scholar-politician, urban theorist, off- and on-critic of the Interstate System, and U.S. Senator (1977-2001), said the Interstate program was "of truly transcendent, continental consequence." It would have "more influence on the shape and development of American cities, the distribution of population within metropolitan areas and across the nation as a whole, the location of industry and various kinds of employment opportunities (and, through all these, immense influence on race relations and the welfare of black Americans) than any initiative in the middle of the twentieth century." He added that, "Activities such as urban renewal, public housing, community development, and the like are reduced to mere digressions when compared to the extraordinary impact of the highway program. ("Policy vs. Program in the '70s," Public Interest, Summer 1970, pages 90, 93-94).
  
• February 26, 2008:   The Interstate System is often called the Greatest Public Works Project in History. Speaking on May 13, 1957, Federal Highway Administrator Bertram D. Tallamy put this statement in perspective: "This Act threw down the greatest challenge that has ever been given to any peace-time public works agency. It is bigger than the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Panama Canal, the Grand Coulee Dam, the Egyptian Pyramids and a lot of other big projects that you can think of, all rolled into one."
  
• February 27, 2008:   The final segment of I-20 (Florence, South Carolina, to Pecos, Texas) opened on April 3, 1989. The last project consisted of grading, structures, storm sewers, and concrete pavement from west of Shepherd Road to east of Beltline Road southeast of Dallas. The total cost of I-20 (1,539.38 miles) was $1.84 billion.
  
• February 28, 2008:   The Capital Beltway surrounding Washington, D.C., gave rise to the phrase "inside the beltway" to define information and debate of primary interest to Washington's political leaders, media, and policy wonks. The phrase is attributed to Mike Causey, a columnist for The Washington Post. ("Outside the Beltway," The Post once joked, refers to "the so-called Real World, as perceived by those unfortunate souls" who inhabit the rest of the country.) [Vic Sussman's "The Best (and Worst) of the Beltway," The Washington Post Magazine, May 21, 1989, p. 28.]
  
• February 29, 2008:   When the Kansas Turnpike was completed in 1956 to the Oklahoma border as part of future I-35, Oklahoma had not yet built its turnpike extension. The Kansas Turnpike ended at the State line on the edge of Oklahoma farmer Amos Switzer’s oat field. Despite dozens of warning signs in Kansas before the State line, motorists, including Wyoming Governor Millard Simpson, hurtled off the turnpike at top speed and landed among Switzer’s oats. Oklahoma, unable to raise funds for its planned turnpike, built the I-35 link with funds from the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The State opened its toll-free connection to the State line—a four-mile link to U.S. 177 with only two lanes at first—on April 22, 1958, with Switzer as the honored guest for the opening ceremony. The roadway was the first segment of the Interstate to open in Oklahoma under the 1956 Act, as well as the first Interstate connection across a State line.
  
• March 1, 2008:   The numbering policy for the Interstate System prohibits using the same number for an Interstate route and a U.S. numbered highway in any State. That is why the Interstate System does not include I-50. In the grid of routes, I-50 would have fallen in many of the same States as U.S. 50 (Annapolis, Maryland, to Sacramento, California), a situation that would have been confusing to motorists seeking directions ("Take Route 50").
  
• March 2, 2008:   The familiar Interstate shield was designed by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) after considering dozens of proposals by the State highway agencies. It was placed into use on August 14, 1957. In 1966, AASHO applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register the shield as a trademark, to secure ownership, and create a legal tool for controlling its indiscriminate use. Trademark Registration 835,635 was issued on September 19, 1967. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (as AASHO is now called) says the trademark "has been used several times to prevent or remove Interstate-like signs near the Interstate highways, where they might confuse the traveling public and cause accidents."
  
• March 3, 2008:   The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge carries the Capital Beltway (I-95/I-495) across the Potomac River. It is the only part of the Interstate System that is owned by the Federal Highway Administration. All other segments are owned and operated by State agencies. (The toll segments are owned by the turnpike authorities that built them.) Construction is underway on replacement of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge; when it is completed, the existing bridge will be removed and the new bridge will be owned by Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
  
• March 4, 2008:   On June 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 while in Walter Reed Army Medical Center following surgery for ileitis earlier in the month. The bill was in a stack of bills he signed without ceremony, statement, or photograph.
  
• March 5, 2008:   I-80 (Teaneck, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California) was the first transcontinental Interstate highway to be completed. The final segment—between Redwood Road and 5600 West in Salt Lake City, Utah—was dedicated in a ceremony on August 22, 1986.
  
• March 6, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorized the Secretary of Commerce, whose department included the Bureau of Public Roads, to approve as part of the Interstate System any toll road located on a route designated as part of the Interstate System. The toll roads had been built by State toll authorities established to issue bonds to finance construction without any Federal tax revenue. On August 21, 1957, Federal Highway Administrator Bertram Tallamy announced inclusion of 2,102 miles of toll roads, including 1,837 miles in operation. Today, the 46,730-mile Interstate System includes approximately 2,900 miles of turnpikes that have been incorporated under the 1956 Act or later provisions.
  
• March 7, 2008:   On June 19, 1986, President Ronald Reagan declared June 26 National Interstate Highway Day and urged "the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities." He called the Interstate System "the world's largest and most successful transportation and public works project."
  
• March 8, 2008:   From 1957 through 2004, vehicles on the Interstate System traveled 15.8 trillion miles.
  
• March 9, 2008:   I-70 in Colorado’s Vail Pass was completed in 1978 through a challenging, environmentally sensitive terrain. Designers incorporated techniques used in the European Alps to minimize scarring, soil erosion, water pollution, and wildlife disturbance. Two miles of I-70 were carried on pre-cast, prestressed, segmented box girders placed on concrete pylons to elevate the highway 90 feet above ground. The elevated segments were installed by gantries moving on completed portions of the highway to minimize the impact of heavy construction equipment on the mountainsides. Because the highway crossed an ancient migratory path for deer, an underpass was included in the project to allow them to move through the area safely.
  
• March 10, 2008:   Secretary of Transportation Samuel K. Skinner said, “1990 is the greatest year for major highway completions in the history of the interstate system.” He was referring to the following openings:
  • June 29: With the opening of the final link of I-40 in North Carolina, the entire route was open from Wilmington, NC, to Barstow, CA (2,554 miles).
  • August 10: The Papago Freeway in Phoenix, Arizona, was the “Final Mile” of I-10, which was completed from Jacksonville, Florida, to Santa Monica, California (2,460 miles).
  • October 15: Completion of I-35 in St. Paul, Minnesota, gives motorists an open highway from Duluth, Minnesota, to Laredo, Texas (1,568 miles).
  • November 20: The final section of I-15 opened near Plymouth, Utah, creating a continuous Interstate highway from the Montana/Canada border at Sweet Grass, to San Diego, California (1,437).
  
  Of these completed routes, Federal Highway Administrator Thomas D. Larson said, “President Eisenhower would be smiling.”
  
• March 11, 2008:   As of the end of 2005, the Interstate System included 55,512 bridges. The Interstate System includes many majestic, eye-catching spans that are among the best bridges ever built, such as the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (I-278) in New York and the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway in Florida (I-275). The System also includes many bridges built to accommodate unique circumstances, such as the I-70 viaducts through scenic Glenwood Canyon in Colorado and the viaducts that make H-3 in Hawaii one of the most scenic drives in one of the most scenic States. However, most Interstate bridges are so common no one notices them: interchange ramps and simple overpasses carrying the Interstate over local roads.
  
• March 12, 2008:   U.S. Route 66, the historic road from Chicago to Los Angeles, was replaced by segments of five Interstate highways: I-55 (Chicago to St. Louis), I-44 (to Oklahoma City), I-40 (to Barstow), I-15 (to San Bernardino), and I-10 (to Los Angeles). The opening of I-40 near Williams, Arizona, on October 13, 1984, bypassed the final segment of U.S. Route 66. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, which controls the designation of U.S. numbered highways, removed U.S. Route 66 from its U.S. highway records on June 27, 1985, because it no longer served interstate traffic. Although this action ended the 59-year life of the historic road, the outcry of public interest in the death of U.S. Route 66 resulted in a rebirth of interest that continues to this day.
  
• March 13, 2008:   If an Interstate highway has a one- or two-digit even number, such as I-40, a motorist can tell it is predominantly an east-west highway. One- and two-digit odd numbers, such as I-15, are reserved for north-south routes. Parts of long-distance multi-State roads may have a different cardinal orientation, but the number is based on the termini (i.e., end points). For example, I-94 between Chicago and Milwaukee, is a north-south route, but this segment is part of an east-west route between Port Huron, Michigan, and Billings, Montana. As a result, the route carries an even number.
  
• March 14, 2008:   On August 17, 1964, Federal, State, and local officials gathered in Maryland to mark completion of the 64.7-mile Capital Beltway around Washington. In a ceremony near the New Hampshire Avenue interchange, Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes and Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton cut a ribbon officially opening the Capital Beltway (and relieving a traffic jam that had formed while the ceremony took place). Governor Tawes called it a "road of opportunity" and Whitton called it a "huge wedding ring for the metropolitan area." (The 21.9-mile Virginia section had been completed in April 1964.)
  
• March 15, 2008:   I-35 is the only Interstate highway with divided numbers—I-35 East and West through St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. The Interstate System once had many numbers that carried cardinal letters, including:
  • I-15W—Burley to Pocatello, Idaho (now I-86);
  ;
  • I-70N—Frederick to Baltimore, Maryland (now I-70);
  • I-70S—Frederick, Maryland, to the District of Columbia (now I-270);
  • I-80N—Portland, Oregon, to Council Bluffs, Iowa (now I-84 from Portland to Salt Lake City, Utah, and I-80 to Council Bluffs);
  • I-80S—Denver, Colorado, to Monroeville, Pennsylvania (now I-80);
  • I-81E—Stroudsburg to Scranton, Pennsylvania (now I-380);
  • I-80S—Seville, Ohio, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now I-76)
  • I-80N—Crescent, Iowa, to Neola, Iowa (now I-680)
  • I-70N—Valleyview, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio (now I-670)
  • I-80S—Big Springs, Nebraska, to Denver CO (now I-76)
  • I-35W—Wichita to Salina, Kansas (now I-135)
  With the exception of the two on I-35, the divided numbers were eliminated to avoid motorist confusion.
  
• March 16, 2008:   On December 17, 1965, Kansas Governor William H. Avery cut the ribbon on the segment of I-70 from Colby to Hays, Kansas, leaving only 35 miles of I-70 to be opened in the State. Snow was blowing and the temperature was 11 degrees as Governor Avery was joined by Mrs. Belle Misner, a 101-year old resident of Colby. Mrs. Misner had sold part of the land of her original family homestead for the I-70 right-of-way.
  
• March 17, 2008:   A brief ceremony on December 21, 1965, marked the opening of the 5.4-mile long I-10 twin span bridges across Lake Pontchartrain and a 9.9-mile stretch of Interstate highways I-10 and I-59 linking New Orleans and Slidell, Louisiana. The ceremony was held at the highest point of the bridge, 65 feet over the lake. The $14.8 million twin spans were constructed from pre-stressed concrete deck spans set atop pre-stressed concrete piles. The Acting Mayor of New Orleans, Joseph V. DiRosa, called it “a great day in the progress of our people.” On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina shattered the bridge. The east span reopened to two lanes of traffic on October 14, 2005, only 47 days after its destruction by the hurricane. The west span reopened on January 6, 2006, restoring four-lane traffic to the vital east-west corridor devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
  
• March 18, 2008:   The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways includes many great bridges. The Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway (I-275) in Florida, the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston (I-93), the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (I-278) in New York City, and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (I-80) are just a few of the world-famous bridges in the System. However, the two greatest bridges in the United States are not included. The Brooklyn Bridge, which opened on May 24, 1883, is not part of a numbered route, while San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge (May 27, 1937) carries U.S. 101.
  
• March 19, 2008:   U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) owes her political career to the Interstate System. As a social worker in Baltimore, she helped community groups block several Interstate highway projects. Her prominent role led to her election to the City Council (1971-1976), where she continued to fight for a sensible transportation network that would not destroy neighborhoods. At one point in 1973, she described the City Council’s ongoing expressway battle as “a transportation Wagnerian opera.” In 1976, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she served until winning the 1992 election to the Senate. (She was most recently reelected in 2004.) The revitalization of downtown Baltimore, with its vibrant Fells Point, Federal Hill, Inner Harbor, and other areas, was made possible by Mikulski and the many other activists who blocked segments of I-70, I-83, and I-95 through these areas. Senator Mikulski still talks about “the Battle of the Expressway” as the start of her career, pointing out in a 1998 presentation that, “Protesters aren’t all that bad.”
  
• March 20, 2008:   The average age of all Interstate bridges is 36 years.
  
• March 21, 2008:   The I-310 Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge crosses the Mississippi River west of New Orleans, Louisiana. Opened in 1983, the $135 million bridge was the first major cable-stayed steel bridge in the country. Its beauty encouraged other States to employ cable-stayed technology.
  
• March 22, 2008:   Federal Highway Administrator Bertram D. Tallamy (1957-1961) preferred blue for the guide signs used along the Interstate System, as was the case along the New York State Thruway he had helped build. Other officials preferred green. To resolve the issue, the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, in cooperation with the American Association of State Highway Officials, staged a 2-week test in 1957 on an unopened section of the Capital Beltway near Greenbelt, Maryland. Experimental signs were erected in blue, green, and black directing motorists to “Metropolis” and “Utopia.” When test motorists preferred green, Tallamy—who was color blind, but found that the blue signs were more vivid—approved green for the signs in January 1958. (The New York Thruway switched to green for the sake of consistency.) In an oral history, Tallamy explained, “I wasn’t the type of boss that insisted he was always right.”
  
• March 23, 2008:   On October 9, 1961, editors of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade magazine informed Maine highway officials that a 24-mile section of I-95 from Augusta to Waterville and Fairfield had been chosen as America’s finest new highway. In announcing America’s Most Scenic New Highway, Parade praised the segment’s combination of scenery, speed and safety that made it a “driver’s highway.” When the segment had opened in November 1960, a Maine newspaper editorial called it “the highway with a soul.”
  
• March 24, 2008:   The Interstate highways were not built from one end to the other. The Interstate System was built under the principles of the Federal-aid highway program, which meant that each State highway agency built its segments. The State decided when each segment of its Interstate routes would be built.
  
• March 25, 2008:   Robert Paul Jordan’s article “Our Growing Interstate Highway System” in the February 1968 issue of National Geographic began: “Americans are living in the midst of a miracle. A giant nationwide engineering project—the Interstate Highway System—is altering and circumventing geography on an unprecedented scale.”
  
• March 26, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 designated the "Dwight D. Eisenhower Highway" to honor the former President’s role in creating the Interstate System. The highway paralleled the route of the U.S. Army’s 1919 transcontinental motor convoy on which Eisenhower gained an understanding of the value of good roads (Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then west on the Lincoln Highway to San Francisco, California). As a result, the route doesn’t follow one highway, but goes as follows:
  • I-270 from the Capital Beltway to I-70 in Frederick, Maryland.
  • I-70 to I-25 in Denver.
  • I-25 to I-80 at Cheyenne, Wyoming.
  • I-80 to San Francisco.
  The new name never took hold. However, on October 14, 1986, a commemorative sign sponsored by The Road Information Program was installed in the tourist information center off I-70 (westbound) in Kansas City, Kansas. Susan Eisenhower, the former President’s granddaughter, attended. "My grandfather considered the Interstate System as among his most lasting achievements. Today, on what would have been his 96th birthday, we can be thankful for his foresight and perseverance."
  
• March 27, 2008:   The most common types of bridge on the Interstate System:
  
  Stringer/Multi-beam or girder: 32,084 (58 percent)
  Culvert: 8,203 (15 percent)
  Slab: 5,449 (10 percent)
  Box beam or girders (multiple): 3,555 (6 percent)
  Tee beam: 3,009 (5 percent)
  
  The Interstate System includes 22 suspension bridges.
  
• March 28, 2008:   I-70 is 424 miles long across Kansas. The end of construction came on June 17, 1970, when Governor Robert Docking snipped the ribbon opening the final 19-mile segment from Goodland to the Colorado line. It was a two-day celebration, beginning with a cross-State caravan from Kansas City and including ceremonies at Hays and Goodland. Many dignitaries spoke, but G. N. Farley, the State’s resident engineer at Oakley, caught the spirit of the people who built the highway. Several months before the opening, he wrote: “None of us realize our capabilities until confronted with a job as large as the Interstate but with organization and teamwork, a difficult job seems easy.” I-70 across Kansas cost $357 million, not counting the portion carried on the Kansas Turnpike.
  
• March 29, 2008:   I-75 was completed at a cost of $3.5 billion from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to Tampa, Florida, on December 21, 1977, with the opening of a segment four miles north of Marietta, Georgia. At the ceremony, Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams called the Interstate System “the crowning achievement” of the Federal-State partnership, “the pride of every American motorist, the envy of other nations and a valuable national asset.” However, more work was needed to complete I-75, which had been extended from Tampa to Miami as part of a 1,500-mile expansion of the Interstate System authorized by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968. The last segment opened on November 25, 1992—the final 10 miles of reconstructed Alligator Alley (Naples to Miami)—although pavement repairs and miscellaneous work remained to complete the conversion.
  
• March 30, 2008:   In Florida, a 33.8-mile gap in I-95, from PGA Boulevard in North Palm Beach to Fort Pierce was closed on December 19, 1987. This opening completed I-95 from Houlton, Maine, to Miami, Florida—almost. A gap remains north of Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is working with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission on a project to complete the final link in I-95.
  
• March 31, 2008:   With the opening of a 32-mile bypass of U.S. 22 in Lehigh and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania, I-78 was completed at a dedication ceremony on November 21, 1989. The “missing link” was built at a cost of $402 million and included 17 miles of sound barriers as part of the environmental mitigation measures needed to resolve two decades of controversy. Governor Robert P. Casey predicted that I-78 “will usher in a new era of prosperity in the Lehigh Valley.” In May 1990, Federal Highway Administrator Thomas D. Larson, a former Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, had his first opportunity to drive on the new highway. Recalling the “decades of acrimonious debate and delay,” he said that closing the gap “involved major compromises, attention to environmental concerns, and careful consensus building.” He added, “It is really amazing just how superior this road is to older Interstates.”
  
• April 1, 2008:   The Pennsylvania Turnpike is sometimes called the “Grandfather of the Interstate System” because its design was an early inspiration for the Interstates. On October 1, 1940, at 12:01 a.m., the initial segment of the turnpike was thrown open without ceremony from Irwin to Carlisle (160 miles). It initially had no speed limit. Motorists who asked the toll-booth attendants about the speed limit were told simply, “Drive carefully.” (A 70-mph speed limit was imposed in April 1941.) The turnpike was an instant success. Initially, it carried 6,000 vehicles a day. By the end of the year, it had carried 515,000 vehicles. A total of 159.5 miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike has been incorporated into the Interstate System, mostly as I-76 (the section from New Stanton to Breezewood also carries the I-70 designation). The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission operates other turnpikes carrying Interstate numbers (76, 276, and 476).
  
• April 2, 2008:   A 12.5-mile section of I-93, featuring variable medians up to 1,400 feet in width, opened on June 29, 1964, with ceremonies in Sanborton, New Hampshire. This section included New Hampshire’s first Interstate safety rest area and the first bridge with prestressed concrete beams constructed with Federal-aid in the State. The rest area overlooked the scenic Sanborton Boulder. Governor John W. King participated in the ribbon cutting.
  
• April 3, 2008:   Wyoming completed its 402.8-mile portion of I-80 on May 4, 1977, with the opening of the final eight-mile stretch at Cheyenne. The opening provided an uninterrupted Interstate route from the junction of I-95 near the George Washington Bridge in Hackensack, New Jersey, to Echo Canyon, 11 miles west of the Wyoming-Utah State line. The final segment included several Wyoming firsts—the first “post tension” bridge at the Archer interchange; peak depletion pond to control water drainage south of Sun Valley; and, the use of 10 tower lights, each 120 feet high, to light a highway interchange. The segment also included the most costly relocation of a power transmission line in the history of the Wyoming Highway Department to that date. During the opening ceremony, Governor Ed Hershler used a power saw to cut down the last “Temporary End I-80” sign in the State.
  
• April 4, 2008:   The Interstate System includes 16 movable bridges. Of these, 11 are bascules or drawbridges while five are lift bridges.
  
• April 5, 2008:   On December 15, 1995, a third harbor tunnel became the first segment of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project (“The Big Dig”) to open. The new crossing is named the Ted Williams Tunnel after the Hall of Fame outfielder for the Boston Red Sox. Instead of boring through bedrock under the harbor, engineers used immersed tube technology, placing a series of giant steel, binocular-shaped tubes in a trench on the harbor floor. Each tube section is as long as a football field. The opening ceremony began with Governor William F. Weld driving a 1966 Ford Thunderbird from the South Boston portal. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Federico Peña and former Governors Edward King and Michael Dukakis were along for the ride. The four-lane I-90 tunnel, built at a cost of $1.3 billion, doubled the capacity to Logan International Airport.
  
• April 6, 2008:   The Connecticut Turnpike, built at a cost of $464 million, opened on January 2, 1958. The U.S. Bureau of Public Roads had added the turnpike, from the New York State line to Old Lyme (98 miles), into the Interstate System as part of I-95 on August 21, 1957. The designation was made under a provision of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 that allowed incorporation of turnpikes built or planned in Interstate corridors. On June 28, 1983, the turnpike bridge over the Mianus River collapsed, causing four vehicles to plunge 70 feet into the water below with three lives lost. Although the turnpike had been built without Federal-aid, a provision in the annual appropriations act for the Department of Transportation allowed the use of Federal-aid to replace the bridge but required the State to end toll collection when all bonds were retired. Toll collection ended on October 10, 1985.
  
• April 7, 2008:   How you refer to Interstates says something about you. If you refer to an Interstate as, for example, “the 5” or “the 10,” you are from, or lived many years, in the west. If you refer to I-95 or “95,” you probably have spent some time in the east. For example, see if you can guess where Tad Friend, California correspondent for The New Yorker magazine, learned his Interstate numbers based on his description of a car chase he had seen on Los Angeles television: “a big rig filled with mixed melons . . . led police on a four-hour meander around the 5, the 605, the 215, and the 15 freeways” (edition of January 23 & 30, 2006).
  
• April 8, 2008:   The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of telecommunications law in almost 62 years and a key step in building the “Information Superhighway.” Signing the bill on February 8, 1996, President Bill Clinton compared it with the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956: “The Interstate Highway Act brought Americans closer together. We were connected city to city, town to town, family to family, as we had never been before. That law did more to bring Americans together than any other law this century, and that same spirit of connection and communication is the driving force behind the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” The President noted that he was signing the Act with one of the pens President Dwight D. Eisenhower had used to sign the 1956 Act. That pen had been given to Senator Al Gore, Sr., Chairman of the Subcommittee on Roads and one of the chief authors of the legislation. He had given the pen to his son, Vice President Al Gore, who brought it to the ceremony at the President’s request.
  
• April 9, 2008:   I-90, from the Seattle waterfront across the Cascade Mountains to eastern Washington, is known as the Mountains to Sound Greenway. It is the only segment of the Interstate System designated on its own as one of America’s Byways® under the National Scenic Byway Program. On June 9, 1998, Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater designated the Mountains to Sound Greenway a National Scenic Byway, a classification meaning that it exemplifies the regional characteristics of our Nation. The America’s Byways Web site says, “From Puget Sound to the Cascade Mountains, the Mountains to Sound Greenway is one of the most spectacular journeys in the Pacific Northwest.” It adds that a trip along the byway is “an experience you will never forget.”
  
• April 10, 2008:   The western section of I-76, from I-70 in Denver, Colorado, to I-80 just beyond the Nebraska line (187.34 miles), was completed on September 15, 1993. A “Spirit of I-76” ceremony dedicated the I-76/I-25 interchange in Denver and the section of I-76 from I-25 to Pecos Street. The route had originally been numbered I-80S, but was renumbered I-76 to commemorate the Nation’s Bicentennial and Colorado’s 100th birthday in 1996. According to the opening day brochure, construction of the six-mile segment of I-76 from I-70 to I-25 began in 1978 and included enough soil to fill Denver’s Mile High Stadium not once, but 11 times, and 14 million pounds of reinforcing steel, which is equal in weight to 84,395,606 Snickers™ candy bars. This segment was also the last segment of Colorado’s Interstate System to open.
  
• April 11, 2008:   Design Standards, Part 1: From the start, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) and its successor, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, have developed minimum design standards for the Interstate System. The U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) and its successor, the Federal Highway Administration, adopted the standards. After the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a 40,000-mile “National System of Interstate Highways” (but not a program to build it), AASHO’s Special Committee on Planning and Design Policies developed the initial standards, which AASHO adopted on August 1, 1945. Rather than calling for a rigid pattern, AASHO varied the standards based on traffic, population density, topography, and other factors.
  
• April 12, 2008:   Design Standards, Part 2: Following enactment of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the American Association of State Highway Officials adopted new geometric design standards for the “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” on July 12, 1956. On July 17, the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads approved the standards, which reflected the importance of the Interstates “as the backbone of the Nation’s highway systems.” All lanes were to be 12-feet wide, with shoulders of at least 10 feet. Two-lane divided Interstates were permitted in less populated areas on right-of-way wide enough to allow widening to four lanes when justified by traffic. Control of access was required, but intersections at grade were permitted in sparsely settled rural areas. All railroad-highway grade crossings were to be eliminated. Design speed (the speed used to determine geometric design features) varied based on whether the terrain was flat (70 mph), rolling (60 mph), or mountainous (50 mph). In urban areas, the design speed should be at least 50 mph.
  
• April 13, 2008:   Design Standards, Part 3: The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 called for Interstate projects to be designed to meet traffic demand in 1975, a few years after the Interstate System was expected to be completed. As that year came closer, officials worried that Interstate routes built in the late 1960s and early 1970s would soon be obsolete. Therefore, the Federal-Aid Highway Amendments Act of 1963 required design for a 20-year period commencing on the date of plan approval. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1966 made another key change in design standards by providing that “such standards shall in all cases provide for at least four lanes of traffic.”
  
• April 14, 2008:   Design Standards, Part 4: The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials issued the most recent edition of A Policy on Design Standards – Interstate System in January 2005. The six-page policy called for a minimum of four lanes, 12 feet wide, with additional lanes if needed to provide an acceptable level of service for applicable conditions. Full control of access is to be maintained throughout the Interstate System, with no at-grade intersections. A minimum design speed of 70 mph applies in rural areas, but in mountainous areas, a design speed of 50 to 60 mph may be used. In urban areas, the design speed shall be at least 50 mph. Other minimum standards covered such features as bridges and other structures, gradients, horizontal clearance to obstructions, interchanges, right-of-way, shoulders, sight distance, and tunnels.
  
• April 15, 2008:   The biggest Interstate year was 1967, when the States opened 3,354.20 miles. Counting turnpikes (2,303.30 miles) incorporated into the Interstate System, a total of 25,641.90 miles had been opened by the end of the year.
  
• April 16, 2008:   I-70 crosses the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, on the Poplar Street Bridge. It consists of two independent bridges, side-by-side, 2,165 feet long. Excluding approaches, the Poplar Street Bridge cost $13.2 million. When it opened on November 9, 1967, the Poplar Street Bridge was the Nation’s first orthotropic bridge (from “orthogonal-anisotropic”). This type of plate-girder bridge can achieve longer spans with a steel-plate deck that is designed to function as a unit with the supporting steelwork. At the time of the opening, Missouri Highway News said, “Clean of line but strong of sinew, the Bridge is a masterful blending of beauty and function.”
  
• April 17, 2008:   By the 1970s, concern was growing about wear and tear on the older Interstate segments. With the States solely responsible for maintenance, the problem became acute when State gas tax revenue fell after oil shortages began in October 1973 when problems in the Middle East prompted the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to reduce, then halt, shipments of oil to the United States. Section 106 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1976 addressed the maintenance problem by authorizing $175 million a year (FY 1978-1979) for resurfacing, restoration, and rehabilitation of non-toll Interstates that had been in use for more than 5 years. The initial program, known as I-3R, was the forerunner of today’s Interstate Maintenance Program (approximately $5 billion a year).
  
• April 18, 2008:   The Interstate System includes 19,765 concrete bridges (36 percent of all Interstate bridges); 13,910 prestressed concrete bridges (25 percent); and 21,759 steel bridges (39 percent).
  
• April 19, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968 expanded the mileage limitation on the 41,000-mile Interstate System to 42,500 miles. In response to the call for proposals, the State highway agencies requested more than 10,000 miles of new Interstates. On December 13, 1968, Secretary of Transportation Alan S. Boyd announced designation of 1,472.5 miles in 28 States. (A reserve pool of 27.5 miles was retained in case adjustments were needed.) Secretary Boyd said the new mileage “will lend more flexibility to the entire system to permit it to meet the tremendous changes in population and development that have occurred since the original 41,000 mile network was charted.”
  
• April 20, 2008:   Section 17 of the Hawaii Omnibus Act (approved July 12, 1960) removed the limitation restricting designation of the Interstate System to the continental United States. On August 29, 1960, Federal Highway Administrator Bertram D. Tallamy approved three routes, designated H-1, H-2, and H-3, on the Island of Oahu. Although they were not connected to the rest of the Interstate System, the routes were constructed to full Interstate standards. On November 1, 1989, the Federal Highway Administration approved the State's request for a fourth route, a 4.1-mile section of Moanalua Freeway/State Route 78 that had been upgraded to Interstate standards without Interstate Construction funds. It was assigned the temporary number H-1-A, and numbered H-201 on December 8, 1990, but the Hawaii Department of Transportation has chosen not to display the number on the route.
  
• April 21, 2008:   The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge carrying I-66 between Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia opened on June 23, 1964. The 3,026-foot long bridge crosses the Potomac River, the Theodore Roosevelt Island, and the Little River. Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the former President’s daughter, cut the ribbon opening the bridge.
  
• April 22, 2008:   Public Law 90-238, enacted on January 2, 1968, was a free-standing bill that authorized “Howard-Cramer” Interstate route additions, named after Chairman James J. Howard (D-NJ) and Representative William C. Cramer (R-FL) of the Committee of Transportation and Public Works. Under the Act, if a State and the Secretary of Transportation agreed that a portion of an Interstate route was not essential to a unified and connected System, the Secretary could withdraw the mileage and apply it to another Interstate. The Act made 200 miles available as a supplement if the withdrawn mileage was not sufficient for the new routes. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 increased the supplemental mileage to 500 miles. The Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1978 ended the Howard-Cramer provision. In all, a total of 403 miles of Howard-Cramer Interstate routes, or portions thereof, was designated in nine States.
  
• April 23, 2008:   Part 1: When the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge on the Capital Beltway was dedicated on December 28, 1961, Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges discarded his prepared remarks. Given the biting winds and near-freezing temperatures, he told the shivering spectators: “I know you just can't wait to hear an address on a day like this. Here it is.” With that, he dropped the folder containing his notes onto the lectern and said, “So let's cut the ribbon.”. (See Part 2 in April 24 Fact of the Day.)
  
• April 24, 2008:   Part 2 (see April 23 Fact of the Day): Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton recalled the incident on January 11, 1964, when his turn to speak came during the opening of the Gastonia link in I-85 in North Carolina. With the temperature in the 30s and the wind blowing, he told participants about Secretary Hodges’ speech. Discarding his own remarks, Whitton said simply, “When completed, the highway will stretch from Montgomery, Ala., to Petersburg, Va. And it will bring people closer together.” Whitton and other participants got into a 1910 automobile for a brief ride to the ribbon that they promptly cut.
  
• April 25, 2008:   The Central Artery (I-93) in Boston, Massachusetts, opened in 1959. The elevated viaduct was soon badly congested. As early as 1964, State highway officials were seeking ways to increase capacity. James D. Fitzgerald, head of the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, asked his staff to consider double-decking the viaduct. He told The Boston Globe on February 3, 1964, “We do not know whether it can be done, but we intend to look into that possibility.” By the early 1970s, the State was studying a proposal to rebuild the Central Artery in a tunnel under the viaduct, a project that became one element of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project.
  
• April 26, 2008:   On July 1, 1964, Texas officials opened an 11.4-mile link in I-10 that completed the Interstate from Houston to Orange, Texas, at the Louisiana State line. The ceremony near the Chambers-Jefferson County line featured installation of a gold-painted guard rail to mark the occasion. Chairman Herbert C. Petry of the Texas Highway Commission placed a gold-painted bolt in the guardrail after calling the 107-mile Houston-to-Orange segment a “golden freeway.” He explained that the golden guardrail “fuses the glitter and promise of two of the State’s most exciting cosmopolitan complexes, Houston and the Beaumont-Orange-Port Arthur Golden Triangle area.” Petry added that with this new link, Texas had completed 1,100 miles of its planned 3,100 miles of Interstate network.
  
• April 27, 2008:   The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) selected the bi-level Sherman Minton Bridge on I-64 as “the most beautiful long-span bridge opened to traffic in 1961.” The bridge crosses the Ohio River connecting Louisville, Kentucky, with New Albany, Indiana. (Minton, a New Albany native, was a United States Senator and Supreme Court Justice.) The double-decked dual suspended arch bridge was built at a cost of $14.8 million.
  
• April 28, 2008:   On June 1, 1964, Wisconsin became the first State to have authorized the acquisition of all its right-of-way for the Interstate System. By authorizing acquisition of property for a seven-mile segment of I-90 southeast of Tomah and a 10-mile segment of I-94 northwest of Tomah, Wisconsin also became the first State to establish the location for its entire Interstate System. By then, Wisconsin had opened 60 percent of the 455 miles of Interstate designated to that point, and all other segments were under some stage of engineering, planning, or construction. Later designations, such as the designation of I-43 (Milwaukee to Green Bay) in 1968, increased the State’s total to 578 miles eligible for Interstate Construction funds. (Construction of I-39 from I-90/94 at Portage to Wassau and extension of I-43 to I-90 at Beloit without Interstate Construction funds increased the State’s total to 742 Interstate miles.)
  
• April 29, 2008:   Dignitaries traveled in a caravan of 40 cars as part of daylong ceremonies on October 6, 1964, opening a 112.4-mile segment of I-94 in North Dakota. The segment from State Route 25 west of Mandan to Fryburg at the eastern side of Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park, parallels the route taken by General George A. Custer and his troops to their final battle at Little Big Horn in 1876. Successive dedications were held at State Route 25, New Salem, Glen Ullin, Hebron, Richardton, Dickinson, and Belfield.
  
• April 30, 2008:   The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) authorized the final funds for the Interstate Construction Program initiated by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. ISTEA authorized $1.8 billion a year for Fiscal Years 1992 through 1996, a total of $7.2 billion. Including funds authorized in 1952 and 1954 for the Interstate System, this amount brought total authorizations for the Interstate Construction Program to $119 billion to pay the Federal share of costs.
  
• May 1, 2008:   The Fort McHenry Tunnel, which carries I-95 across the Baltimore Harbor in Maryland, opened on November 23, 1985. Crossing the harbor on a bridge was rejected because of potential impacts on the view from historic Fort McHenry, site of the battle on September 12-14, 1814 (part of the War of 1812), that prompted Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the National Anthem. The tunnel, built at a cost of about $750 million, is the world’s largest submerged tube tunnel designed for vehicular traffic.
  
• May 2, 2008:   The average daily traffic on all Interstate bridges is 1.9 billion vehicles a day. This total includes 244.8 million trucks.
  
• May 3, 2008:   Shortly after passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Commissioner of Public Roads C. D. “Cap” Curtiss of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads addressed the Southeastern Association of State Highway Officials. He concluded by saying, “In the final analysis, we will be judged not by the speed of construction or the difficulties overcome but by what the driving public sees and feels as they use the Nation’s most important highways—the Interstate System.”
  
• May 4, 2008:   Several Interstate highways have the “splits”—unconnected roads carrying the same number. For example, the eastern portion of I-76 links I-676 in Camden, New Jersey, and I-71 west of Akron, Ohio (434.36 miles). The western portion of I-76 runs from I-70 in Denver, Colorado, to I-80 just beyond the Nebraska line (187.34 miles). I-84 is another example. The eastern portion links I-90 north of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and I-380 in Scranton, Pennsylvania (232.39 miles). In the West, I-84 runs from I-5 in Portland, Oregon, to I-80 near Echo, Utah (769.62 miles). Other splits include I-86 and I-88.
  
• May 5, 2008:   I-27 is a 124-mile Interstate in Texas that connects I-40 in Amarillo and 82nd Street in Lubbock. It was added to the Interstate System on December 12, 1968, after the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968 increased the Interstate mileage limitation by 1,500 miles (to 42,500 miles). The final section (from 19th to 54th Street in Lubbock) was dedicated with a ceremony on September 3, 1992, at the 34th Street overpass. Total cost of I-27: $579 million.
  
• May 6, 2008:   Section 107 of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1978 prohibited the Secretary of Transportation from designating additional routes for development with Interstate Construction funds authorized under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, as amended. The section also mandated that segments should be removed from Interstate designation unless an environmental impact statement had been submitted to the Secretary by September 30, 1983. In these and other provisions, Section 107 encouraged expedited Interstate completion.
  
• May 7, 2008:   The final link in I-70 (Baltimore, Maryland, to Cove Fort, Utah) was completed with the opening of the 12-mile segment through Glenwood Canyon, Colorado, on October 14, 1992. At a cost of $4.1 billion, I-70 was open for its entire length of 2,175 miles. When I-70 opened through Glenwood Canyon, Federal Highway Administrator Thomas D. Larson called it “a world class piece of environmentally sensitive engineering.” He added, “While some may think that this is an oxymoron, in fact this project proves that desirable environmental goals and great engineering feats can be mutually compatible.”
  
• May 8, 2008:   Louisiana’s Interstate network originally included I-10 and I-20 crossing the State, east-to-west, with no link between them. The State considered a toll link, but rejected the idea. In the mid-1970s, the Federal Highway Administration approved an Interstate link from I-10 at Lafayette to I-20 at Shreveport, using mileage released from other routes the State decided not to build, plus 153 miles from a supplemental reserve. The 212-mile I-49 was completed on May 1, 1996, at a cost of about $1.38 billion. It was the longest Interstate that began and ended in one State. The final segment was a 16.6-mile segment in Alexandria known as the Martin Luther King Jr. Highway. For the opening ceremony, President Bill Clinton sent a congratulatory statement noting, “This major arterial marks the completion of nearly 900 miles of Interstate in Louisiana.” Plans to extend I-49 south to New Orleans and north to Kansas City, Missouri, are underway as a High Priority Corridor of the National Highway System.
  
• May 9, 2008:   I-57 is the longest Interstate highway in Illinois. From I-94 in Chicago to the Mississippi River north of Cairo, it is 358 miles long. The route continues on to I-55 in Miner, Missouri, an additional 22 miles. The next longest Interstate in Illinois is I-55 at 313 miles. The State’s shortest Interstate is I-190 in Chicago, a 3-mile long route from I-90 to Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
  
• May 10, 2008:   South Carolina awarded its first Interstate contract under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 on September 21, 1956. The Inland Bridge Company of Chester was awarded the $280,000 contract to construct a bridge over the Broad River in Cherokee Contract on a route that became I-85.
  
• May 11, 2008:   President Dwight D. Eisenhower planned to ask the Nation’s Governors for help in realizing his “Grand Plan” for highways during their annual conference, held on July 12, 1954, at Lake George, New York. (Because of a death in the President’s family, Vice President Richard M. Nixon delivered the speech.) The Interstate nearest to Lake George is I-87, a New York-only route from the Canadian border at Rouses Point to I-287 near the New Jersey Border (330 miles). South of Albany, I-87 is carried on the New York State Thruway; this segment was completed in August 1956. North of Albany, I-87 is the toll-free scenic Adirondack Northway. Construction began in 1957 and was completed on August 30, 1967, without ceremony when workers removed barricades blocking the final 30-mile stretch from Underwood to Keeseville in Essex County.
  
• May 12, 2008:   New York has the most Interstate routes: 29. The longest is I-90 (387 miles) and the shortest is I-78, which crosses the Hudson River through the Holland Tunnel before ending in Manhattan (0.50 miles). (California, with 25 routes, is second.)
  
• May 13, 2008:   Four States have only three Interstate routes--the fewest of any State:
  
  Delaware: I-95, I-295, I-495 (41 miles)
  New Mexico: I-10, I-25, I-40 (71 miles)
  North Dakota: I-29, I-94, I-194 (571 miles)
  Rhode Island: I-95, I-195, I-295 (1,000 miles)
  
  
• May 14, 2008:   Texas has more Interstate miles than any State (3,233 miles).
  
• May 15, 2008:   At 367 miles, I-30 is the shortest two-digit Interstate with a number ending in zero (Fort Worth, Texas, to Little Rock, Arkansas).
  
• May 16, 2008:   The two-lane West Virginia Turnpike (I-77) opened on November 8, 1954.  The project to upgrade the turnpike to four lanes was completed on September 2, 1987.  During a ceremony in Sharon, Highway Commissioner William Ritchie called the upgrading "the toughest, hardest, meanest construction job" in the State's history.
  
• May 17, 2008:   The Verrazano Narrows Bridge, part of I-278, opened on November 21, 1964, at a cost of $325 million.  It links the borough of Brooklyn with Staten Island in New York.  The bridge, which is longer than the Golden Gate Bridge by 60 feet, was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time (6,690 miles between anchorages; 4,260 feet from tower to tower).  A second six-lane deck below the original six-lane deck opened on June 28, 1969.  (Japan's Akashi Kaikyo Bridge linking Kobe and Naruto opened in 1998 and is now the world's longest suspension span at 6,527 feet.)
  
• May 18, 2008:   Half of the 41,000-mile Interstate System, or 21,185 miles, was open by the end of 1965.  This total included 2,166 miles opened in 1965.  To that point, the States had put $24.7 billion to work on Interstate projects.  By 1968, when Congress authorized designation of an additional 1,500 miles, approximately 65 percent of the Interstate System (more than 27,600 miles) had been opened, so 1965 remains the halfway mark.
  
• May 19, 2008:   In 1955 and 1956, Congress was looking for a way to pay for a program that would complete the Interstate System in 10 years at a cost of $27 billion.  Using the Consumer Price Index, this would translate into searching for a source of $196 billion in mid-2005 dollars.
  
• May 20, 2008:   From the 2005 Annual Report of the Nebraska Department of Roads:  "On October 19, 1974, a "Golden Link" ceremony was held near Sidney and marked the opening of the final mainline segment of I-80 in Nebraska.  The From the 2005 Annual Report of the Nebraska Department of Roads:  "On October 19, 1974, a "Golden Link" ceremony was held near Sidney and marked the opening of the final mainline segment of I-80 in Nebraska.  The ‘Golden Link' was an embedded brass-top section of channel-iron across all four lanes of traffic.  There is also an informational marker about the I-80 construction . . . The final construction cost for the 455.3 miles of I-80 in Nebraska was $390 million, about $800,000 per mile."  The report adds that 25 safety rest areas serve the I-80 corridor in Nebraska, including 10 with computer kiosks that provide weather and traveler information.
  
• May 21, 2008:   Only two Interstates end at international borders at both termini (Canada and Mexico):  I-5 and I-35.
  
• May 22, 2008:   The first section of the New York State Thruway (I-90) opened on June 24, 1954—Lowell to Rochester (115 miles).
  
• May 23, 2008:   Hurricane Ivan struck the Gulf Coast States on September 16, 2004.  Passing through Pensacola, Florida, the hurricane damaged the twin-span I-10 bridge across Escambia Bay.  Governor Jeb Bush commented, "The I-10 issue creates some logistical challenges—not just for the hurricane efforts but ongoing efforts to sustain the economy in northwest Florida."  A photograph of the broken bridge with a truck dangling over a damaged section became the symbol of the hurricane.  Through remarkable cooperation among Federal and State officials, as well as the contractor, officials reopened one span of the bridge within three weeks.
  
• May 24, 2008:   I-45 is the shortest two-digit Interstate ending in "5."  It's a 285-mile route that connects Galveston and Dallas, Texas.  The first Texas Interstate project under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was for a section of I-45 in Navarro County near Corsicana in 1956.  The final gap between the two cities was completed on October 13, 1971, with the opening of a 12-mile section between Fairfield and Streetman in Freestone County.   (Work on I-45 in Dallas remained to be completed.)
  
• May 25, 2008:   Out of nearly four million miles of public roads in the United States, a total of about 96,712 miles is eligible for Federal-aid highway funds.  The Interstate System totals 4.8 percent of mileage eligible for Federal-aid.
  
• May 26, 2008:   The I-80 bridge across the Mississippi River linking Illinois and Iowa opened on October 27, 1966, on a beautiful sunny day.  Iowa Governor Harold Hughes arrived by helicopter to tell spectators and officials from both States, "This is not the first bridge over the Father of Waters, but it is the greatest."  Francis S. Lorenz, director of the Illinois Department of Public Works, stated that I-80 is the greatest transcontinental route and would shrink coast-to-coast travel time by 45 percent.  His Iowa counterpart, Harry Bradley, Jr., chairman of the Iowa Highway Commission, said of the bridge and additional mileage that would be opened later that year: "This is more than concrete and steel.  It is the labor of many men," three of whom lost their life building the bridge. The bridge is named after Representative Fred Schwengel, who represented Davenport from 1955 to 1965 and 1967 to 1973,
  
• May 27, 2008:   Although the Interstate System accounts for about 1.1 percent of the Nation’s total public road mileage, it carries 24 percent of all highway travel.
  
• May 28, 2008:   Mississippi's first Interstate project after enactment of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was a 27-mile segment of I-55 linking Hernando, Coldwater, and Senatobia.  Although the project was one of several to go to contract in late 1956, groundbreaking for the first contract to go to construction was in July 1957 at Coldwater. The bridge is named after Representative Fred Schwengel, who represented Davenport from 1955 to 1965 and 1967 to1973.
  
• May 29, 2008:   The Eisenhower Interstate System includes approximately 15,000 interchanges.
  
• May 30, 2008:   On December 14, 1973, Arizona opened its section of I-15 through the Virgin River Gorge in the northwest corner of the State.  The segment was hailed even before it opened as Arizona's most spectacular scenic highway.  A 1988 article in Arizona Highways described the section:  "The smoothly banked and graceful lines of the roadway seem to flow through the canyon as naturally as the Virgin River itself."  The article added that the project "enhanced rather than distracted from Nature's handiwork."
  
• May 31, 2008:   Near-freezing temperatures and a misty rain cut the dedication ceremony short on February 23, 1968, for I-10 between Franklin and St. Bernard Avenues in New Orleans, Louisiana.  According to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, "A handful of city, state and federal officials braved the inclement weather atop the $23.5 million roadway for the speeches dedicating the highway."  The newspaper added that E. J. Grizzaffi, chairman of the Louisiana Board of Highways, called the 1.8-mile section of I-10 "the most expensive" stretch of roadway among current projects. 
  
• June 1, 2008:   Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman, Jr., approved Federal-aid Interstate funds for construction of the controversial I-66 from the Capital Beltway to the District of Columbia on January 5, 1977.  To address concerns about the highway, Secretary Coleman limited I-66 to a four-lane, limited access highway with Metrorail's Vienna line in its median.  Heavy trucks were excluded and, during peak hours, traffic in the peak direction would be limited to buses, automobiles with four occupants, emergency vehicles, and Dulles Airport traffic.  The last segment of I-66 opened on December 22, 1982.
  
• June 2, 2008:   The Interstate System carries about 721,381,000,000 Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) a year.  About 91,296,000,000 VMT are by heavy single-unit and combination trucks.
  
• June 3, 2008:   I-980, a 0.8-mile link between the port of San Francisco Bay and downtown Oakland, was added to California's Interstate System in 1976.  A ribbon cutting ceremony on March 6, 1985, marked completion of the Interstate.
  
• June 4, 2008:   The Mackinac Bridge in Michigan carries I-75 across the Straits of Mackinac between lower Michigan and its Upper Penninsula. Designed by David B. Steinman, one of the 20th century’s greatest bridge engineers, the 5-mile long Mackinaw Bridge opened on November 1, 1957. The first Michigan resident to cross the bridge: Governor G. Mennen Williams, who paid a toll of $3.25.
  
• June 5, 2008:   When Georgia opened its first four-level interchange in 1988, connecting I-85 and I-285 on the northeast side of Atlanta, residents nicknamed it the "Super Looper."  The interchange covers 311 acres and is composed of 12 ramps and 14 bridges, totaling 2.62 miles and containing 150,000 cubic yards of concrete.
  
• June 6, 2008:   The Interstate System carries 40.3 percent of single and combination-unit truck travel on all public roads in the United States.
  
• June 7, 2008:   The two-year, $210-million reconstruction of the Dan Ryan Expressway  (I-90/94) in Chicago, between 31st Street and the Eisenhower Expressway, began on March 1, 1988.  The public and media expected massive congestion while work was underway on the heavily used freeway.  However, because of careful planning of alternate routes and an extensive publicity campaign, the closing of two northbound lanes did not result in the widely expected traffic nightmare.   A March 2 article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the closing was headlined, "A Breeze!" and began, "Rush hour? What rush hour?"
  
• June 8, 2008:   On May 25, 1987, Maryland highway officials conducted several important events known collectively as a "Five-Star Highway Commemoration Day."  Ground was broken for the final link in the National Freeway, I-68, in the western part of the State.  Elsewhere, the State rededicated I-81 as the Maryland Veterans Memorial Highway and a sign was unveiled along I-70 honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower for his role in getting the Interstate program started.  The day included placing a plaque dedicated to former Congressman Goodloe E. Byron at the Monocacy River Overlook on I-270, and the opening of a three-span, 680-foot bridge over Deep Creek Lake on U.S. 219, replacing a two-span bridge that had been built in 1924.
  
• June 9, 2008:   I-65 is an 888-mile route from I-10 in Mobile, Alabama, to an approach to I-90 (East-West Toll Road) in Gary, Indiana.  The route was completed with the opening of the final 14 miles of I-65 in Alabama in December 1985.
  
• June 10, 2008:   The five Interstate routes that pass through the most urbanized areas (i.e., areas with populations over 50,000) are:
  • I-95 (26 areas)
  • I-80 (22)
  • I-75 (22)
  • I-10 (21)
  • I-90 (20)
  
  
• June 11, 2008:  

  In some States, a high proportion of statewide traffic is on the Interstate System; while in others, the Interstate System carries a lower proportion of all traffic:

  Most Served:	Least Served:
  Utah: 36%	Florida: 18%
  Connecticut: 33%	Wisconsin: 17%
  Wyoming: 32%	Vermont: 17%
  Alaska: 30%	Delaware: 15%
  Maryland: 30%	Washington, DC: 12%

  
  

  "Most" and "least" are relative terms.  Utah's Interstate System comprises two percent of its total road mileage and carries 8.9 billion Vehicle Miles of Travel (VMT).  Florida's Interstates equal one percent of the State's total road mileage but carry 31.7 billion VMT.

  
  
• June 12, 2008:   The first segment of Tennessee's 7.5-mile I-440 opened in Nashville on December 12, 1985, from I-24 to I-65.  The right-of-way had been acquired in the late 1960s, but the alignment had proven controversial.  Several designs were considered before a depressed parkway design was adopted.  Construction began in early 1982 with earth berms and extensive landscaping to complement the depressed design and minimize adverse impacts on the neighborhood the Interstate passes through.  Completion of I-440 in April 1987 would complete the State's Interstates.  (The first Interstate segment to open in the State had been I-65 in Ardmore on November 15, 1958.)
  
• June 13, 2008:   With the opening of I-90 at the Montana-Wyoming border on October 10, 1985, Wyoming completed its 914-mile Interstate System.  The final project covered a 10-mile section of I-90 from the Montana-Wyoming border to the Ranchester interchange northwest of Sheridan.  The Wyoming had completed its $6.2 million project in the summer, but the opening was delayed until Montana completed the adjoining section of I-90.  Contracts for new Interstate construction in Wyoming totaled $570 million. 
  
• June 14, 2008:   The 7.4-mile Golden Strip Freeway (I-385) in Greenville, South Carolina, opened on October 14, 1984.  Built at a cost of $44 million, the freeway was part of the State's designated mileage under the Interstate Construction Program.  A 36-mile extension of the route to I-26 at Clinton was built outside the Interstate program with other funding.
  
• June 15, 2008:   To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Interstate System in 1986, highway officials, congressional leaders, and other dignitaries gathered in the Russell Senate Office Building.  Former Federal Highway Administrator Francis C. (Frank) Turner—who played a key role in developing the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956—told the gathering, "We are paying honor today not only to the physical construction of the Interstate System, but to its integral fiscal structure, which is its inseparable foundation."  Special guest Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said, "We are proud and happy for this national recognition of one of Grandfather's crowning achievements.  He was committed to a strong Interstate transportation network and never doubted that it would happen, and I think this would have been one of his proudest moments."  Barnhart, noting that 97 percent of the Interstate System was open, said, "America is, in fact, mobility, and the Interstate system is the backbone of that mobility."
  
• June 16, 2008:   Interstate loops (linked to other Interstates on both ends) and spurs (linked on only one end) are assigned three-digit numbers:   even for loops (e.g., I-295), odd for spurs (I-195).  To avoid duplication within a State, a progression of prefixes is used for the three-digit numbers (e.g., I-295, 495, 695, etc.).  This system is not carried across State lines.  As a result, the same three-digit numbers may be used in each State the one- or two-digit numbered Interstate crosses.  On this basis, I-295, which is used for seven Interstate routes in eight States and the District of Columbia, is the most used three-digit number (Delaware/New Jersey, Florida, Maine, DC/Maryland, Massachusetts/Rhode Island, New York, and Virginia).
  
• June 17, 2008:   Fun with numbers (East):  I-95 from the Canadian border at Houlton, Maine, to U.S. 1 in Miami, Florida, passes through 15 States and the District of Columbia.  Maryland has the most loop and spur routes numbered on the basis of links to I-95 (I-195, 295, 395, 495, 595, 695, 795, and 895).  Four I-95 States are tied for the second most linked routes:  Florida (I-195, 295, 395, and 595), Maine (I-195, 295, 395, and 495), Massachusetts (I-195, 295, 395, and 495), and Virginia (I-195, 295, 395, and 495).  Five States have no loop/spur routes linked to I-95 (Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina).  In two States, the entire Interstate network consists of I-95 and "95" variations:  Delaware (I-95, 295, and 495) and Rhode Island (I-95, 195, and 295).  The District of Columbia has five Interstate routes, four of which are linked to I-95 (I-95, 295, 395, and 695), plus I-66. 
  
• June 18, 2008:   Fun with numbers (West):  I-5 from the Canadian Border at Blaine, Washington, to the Mexican border south of San Diego, California, passes through three States—California, Oregon, and Washington—the fewest States of any border to border north-south "5" variation.  California has the most loop and spur routes numbered on the basis of links to I-5 (I-105, 205, 305, 405, 505, 605, and 805).  Three loop/spur variations exist in Oregon (I-105, 205, 405) and Washington (I-205, 405, and 705).
  
• June 19, 2008:   Fun with numbers (North):  I-90 from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, to I-5 in Seattle, Washington, passes through 13 States (the second highest number of States behind I-95, which passes through 15 States and the District of Columbia).  New York has the most loop and spur routes numbered on the basis of links to I-90.  In fact, it uses every possible prefix (I-190, 290, 390, 490, 590, 690, 790, 890, and 990).  Two States have two loop/spur routes each numbered on the basis of I-90 links, Illinois (I-190 and 290) and Massachusetts (also I-190 and 290).  Ohio (I-490) and South Dakota (I-190) have one each loop/spur variant of I-90.  Seven States have no loop/spur routes based on links to I-90 (Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, Montana, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming). 
  
• June 20, 2008:   Fun with numbers (South):  I-10 from I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida, to California Route 1 in Los Angeles (Santa Monica) passes through eight States.  Louisiana has the most loop and spur routes numbered on the basis of links to I-10 (I-110, 210, 310, 510, and 610).  Two States have three loop/spur routes linked to I-10, California (I-110, 210, and 710) and Texas (I-110, I-410, and I-610).  Two States have one loop each, both numbered I-110 (Florida and Mississippi), but no spurs, while three States have no loop/spur routes based on the mainline number (Alabama, Arizona, and New Mexico).
  
• June 21, 2008:   To build I-70 west of Denver, highway officials in Colorado created a monumental natural art work in the geological formation called the Hogback.  It had been formed 50 to 80 million years ago by the gigantic upheaval that produced the Rocky Mountains.  With the help of conservation and civic groups, Colorado highway officials cut the six-lane I-70 through the Hogback with an imaginative proposal.  As the Bureau of Public Roads explained at the time, "Instead of a steeply benched cut through the Hogback, why not widen it with broad terraces, which would be more pleasing aesthetically?  [Bared] for the first time, the strata stood out in beautiful, well-defined pastel bands."  Construction of I-70 through the Hogback was completed in 1969.  The Hogback cut remains a nature study area with marked trails to points of special interest.
  
• June 22, 2008:   The New York/northeastern New Jersey urbanized area is served by 460 miles of Interstate highway, the most of any urbanized area.
  
• June 23, 2008:   The first section of San Francisco’s Junipera Serra Freeway (I-280) was dedicated on July 13, 1971. The $12 million eight-lane elevated freeway (between 18^th and Mariposa Streets and Sixth and Brannan Streets) used airspace over the Southern Pacific Railroad mainline.  During the opening ceremony, State highway officials cited the beautiful view the freeway provided of the city’s skyline, as well as the direct connection to the Southern Freeway that would relieve the “already overburdened” James Lick and Central Freeways (U.S. 101).  The final section of the freeway, from Belmont to Woodside, opened on September 7, 1973.
  
• June 24, 2008:   The Great Truck Blockade occurred on Interstate highways in early December 1973 as a protest against the high price of diesel fuel, fuel shortages, and lowered speed limits in the wake of the oil embargo initiated by Middle East countries opposed to America’s support of Israel.  Among the protests: drivers jack-knifed 4,000 tractor-trailers to stop traffic on the Ohio Turnpike (I-80/I-90), caused a seven-hour backup on the Delaware Memorial Bridge (I-295), and created a 15-mile jam on I-80 in Pennsylvania.  As U.S. News and World Report put it, “Like widely scattered thunderstorms, one industry’s pent-up frustration over energy problems burst wide open in early December.”
  
• June 25, 2008:   A 12-mile section of I-26 in Madison County, North Carolina, has been designated a State scenic byway.  The final nine-mile section, from Mars Hill to the Tennessee State line, opened on August 5, 2003, completing I-26 in the State.  During the opening ceremony, Secretary Lyndo Tippett of the North Carolina Department of Transportation said, “From the wildlife underpasses to the native stone incorporated into the welcome center, we have taken special care to make sure that this project protects and enhances its natural surroundings.”  I-26 has been designated from U.S. 17 in Charleston, South Carolina, to I-81 in eastern Tennessee.
  
  
• June 26, 2008:   Decade-by decade Vehicle Miles Traveled on the Interstate System (in millions, i.e., add six zeroes):
  
  

  Year	Rural	Urban	Total
  1960	10,514	13,365	23,879
  1970	79,516	81,532	161,048
  1980	135,084	161,242	296,326
  1990	200,173	278,901	479,074
  2000	268,960	393,580	662,540

  
  
• June 27, 2008:   I-10 in Mobile, Alabama, was built in a tunnel across the Mobile River because of its proximity to the Mobile City Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark, and other buildings that comprise a National Register Historic District (such as the County Courthouse, L&N Depot, and the Police Building).  Special care was taken during construction to preserve these landmarks.  Strict control and monitoring of ground water in the area of excavation and a ground water recharge system were employed.  The cofferdam sheet piles were vibrated into place instead of using impact driving.  Excavation revealed artifacts and relics from Fort Condé, which was built by the French in 1723 and remained in use through 1820.  Construction of the tunnel, which began on October 9, 1969, was completed with its opening on February 9, 1973.  The tunnel is named the George Wallace Tunnel after the former Alabama Governor who served from 1963 to 1967, 1971 to 1979, and 1983 to 1987. 
  
• June 28, 2008:   A 184-mile section of I-5 opened between Los Banos and Wheeler Ridge, California on March 1, 1972.   The $90-million link, one of the largest Interstate sections opened at one time, was expected to relieve traffic on parallel U.S. Routes 99 and 101 and offer economic opportunities for the rural area between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  As The Los Angeles Times pointed out, “The estimated 8,750 motorists who will use Interstate 5 each day will find it 27 miles shorter than 99.  It should save 40 minutes of driving time between Los Angeles and San Francisco.”
  
• June 29, 2008:   Indiana completed its segment of I-65 on June 30, 1972.  Governor Edgar D. Whitcomb opened the final 30-mile link between I-465 in Indianapolis and Taylorsville with a ceremony at the State Route 44 interchange east of Franklin.  The section cost $1.2 million and was expected to save about 19 minutes compared with parallel U.S. 31.
  
• June 30, 2008:   Alfred E. “Alf” Johnson, Executive Secretary of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), applied the original numbers to the Interstate System in 1957.  Johnson was a career employee of Arkansas’ highway agency who rose to Chief Engineer and Chief Engineer-Director.  He served as president of AASHO in 1954 before becoming Executive Secretary in December of that year.  He recalled, “At the time we started on this job of Interstate System numerology, we had a special committee appointed that spent some two or three days on the assignment.  After that length of time, they left me with some general instructions and suggested I complete the assignment, which later was approved by the Route Numbering Committee and the Executive Committee.”  The U.S. Bureau of Public Roads approved the plan on September 10, 1957.
  
• July 1, 2008:   The Interstate System was born in two reports to Congress, Toll Roads and Free Roads (1939) and Interregional Highways (1944).  They were largely the work of two men, Thomas H. MacDonald and Herbert S. Fairbank.  MacDonald was born in 1881 in Leadsville, Colorado, but his family moved to Iowa in 1884.  In 1904, he took a leadership role in Iowa’s new highway agency.  He became Chief of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads in 1919, and would serve in that capacity through March 1953.  During that time, he saved the floundering Federal-aid highway program; focused its resources on a Federal-aid system of roads; built solid partnerships with the State highway agencies, the construction industry, and university researchers; and took the country from dirt roads to the Interstate era.  When he died in April 1957, The Washington Post said, “Everyone who drives a car or truck, for business or for pleasure, across the face of America stands indebted to this quiet, forceful public servant who earned the title, ‘the father of all good roads in the United States.’”
  
• July 2, 2008:   The two reports to Congress that launched the Interstate System (Toll Roads and Free Roads (1939) and Interregional Highways (1944)) were a product of many contributors, but Herbert S. Fairbank wrote them.  A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Fairbank joined the U.S. Office of Public Roads (as it was then called) in 1910 and proved to be a talented writer, scholar, researcher, and pioneer planner.  He conceived and launched the mid-1930s statewide highway surveys that provided the data he used to support the conclusion of the two reports that the country needed an express highway network for interstate service and to address urban needs.  His concepts, which were visionary and yet grounded in facts, laid the foundation for the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.  In 1944, he told the American Planning and Civic Association:
  

  To those who doubt on grounds of financial feasibility whether we can afford the modernization of our highway system, who say in effect:  “Yes, this all sounds very attractive; we recognize the need, but can we accomplish the ambitious ends proposed?”  It might be answered that a better question would be:  “Dare we fail?”

  
  Fairbank retired in 1955 after completing one last report to Congress, Needs of the Highway Systems, 1955-84, that provided a useful information as the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 made its way to passage and President Eisenhower’s signature.  Fairbank died in 1962. 
  
• July 3, 2008:   Francis C. “Frank” Turner joined the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) after graduating from what is now Texas A&M University in 1929.  After a career that took him to Arkansas, the Alaska Highway, and the Philippines, he became Assistant to the Commissioner of Public Roads, Thomas H. MacDonald.  He was Executive Secretary of the Clay Committee appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to develop a funding plan for the Interstate System and other highway improvements, and served as BPR liaison to the congressional committees that developed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.  Through the biggest years of Interstate construction, he was involved in Interstate location and design decisions around the country.  Under President Richard M. Nixon, Turner became the Federal Highway Administrator in 1969, the only person to rise through the ranks to the top position.  In accepting Turner’s resignation in 1972, President Nixon said:
  
  

  As an architect of the interstate system, you should feel a very special sense of pride in the fact that this, the largest public works program in world history, has been administered with uncompromising integrity and steadfast dedication to public trust.  This record fully merits the gratitude of all our fellow citizens, and, in their behalf as well as that of your many friends and colleagues throughout Government, I want to express my deep appreciation for your service and my best wishes for the years ahead.

  
  
• July 4, 2008:   On September 22, 1969, the reversible express lanes in the median of the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway (I-95, now I-395) in Northern Virginia were restricted to buses in the morning peak period.  It was the first time in the country that lanes were reserved for buses.  With construction still under way to widen Shirley Highway, the buses were limited to the express lanes from Edsal/Seminary Roads to Shirlington, but the lanes were eventually extended from the Capital Beltway into the District of Columbia.  On December 11, 1973, the bus lanes were opened to carpools with four or more occupants.
  
• July 5, 2008:   Crossing Allen Creek in Rochester, New York, I-490 is carried across a 75 to 80-foot section of a structure that was built in 1905 for the Rochester to Syracuse interurban railroad.  The twin-cell concrete rigid frame structure with an arch top was built to look like stone.  In 1956/1957 when that section of the Interstate was built in Rochester, traffic on one side of the Interstate was carried on this 1905 structure, with the other side carried on a new concrete structure.  In 1991, the structure was lengthened to accommodate a widened Interstate, but the 1905 structure remains in use.
  
• July 6, 2008:   I-84 over the Connecticut River between Hartford and East Hartford, Connecticut, is carried on the Morgan G. Bulkeley Bridge.  The bridge, which opened in 1908, was widened to eight lanes to carry I-84 traffic.  Bulkeley was a Hartford insurance executive and civic leader who served as Mayor (1879-1887), Governor (1889-1893), and United States Senator (1905-1911).  Connecticut’s 98-mile section of I-84 was completed on December 14, 1969, with the opening of the segment between Southington and Hartford.
  
• July 7, 2008:   Between Memphis, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas, I-40 carries the interstate traffic that once used U.S. 70, the modern descendant of a Federal military road built in the 1820s.
  
• July 8, 2008:   The earliest section of I-75 opened in August 1951 (the section in Atlanta, Georgia, that overlaps   I-85) before the Interstate numbers were applied to the network in September 1957.  The first segment to open after enactment of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was in Michigan, just across the Ohio line (September 1956). 
  
• July 9, 2008:   From August 7 to August 11, 1997, the reversible lanes on a 7.6-mile stretch of I-15 about 10 miles north of downtown San Diego, California, were the site of the Nation’s first operational automated highway system.  Thousands of magnetic markers were embedded in the roadway to control vehicles that were equipped with in-vehicle sensors, computers, and communication devices. 
  
• July 10, 2008:   In Vermont, I-89 is called the Veterans Memorial Highway.  The name was chosen because the summer scenery along I-89 reminded Vietnam War veterans of Highway 1 in the central highlands of Vietnam.  On October 30, 1982, officials and veterans dedicated a memorial to Vermont’s Vietnam veterans in the northbound I-89 rest area near Sharon.  When the rest area was reconstructed in 2005, a more permanent memorial, including a museum, was added.
  
• July 11, 2008:   The twin suspension spans known as the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge carry I-74 across the Mississippi River between Bettendorf, Iowa, and Moline, Illinois.  The first span, carrying northbound traffic, opened in November 1935.  The southbound span opened in December 1959.
  
• July 12, 2008:   The Cochran Hill Tunnel on I-64 in Louisville, Kentucky, was built under Cherokee Park, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and opened in 1892.  The tunnel was one of the first attempts in the State to minimize the environmental impacts of road construction.
  
• July 13, 2008:   The bridge carrying the Capital Beltway (I-495) across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia opened on December 31, 1962, and was known unofficially as the Cabin John Bridge, inheriting the name of an earlier span.   On Memorial Day 1969 (May 30), the Maryland State Roads Commission officially named the span the American Legion Memorial Bridge to honor the 50^th anniversary of the American Legion.
  
• July 14, 2008:   Wisconsin completed its 187-mile portion of I-90 with the opening of the 38-mile section between LaCrosse and Tomah on November 4, 1969. 
  
• July 15, 2008:   Motorists crossing Nebraska’s 455-mile I-80 may wish to enjoy a stop at one of the 50 lakes known as the “Chain of Lakes.”  They are located mostly along a 160-mile stretch from Grand Island to Hershey.  Highway engineers created the lakes by excavating the sites for dirt (“borrow pits”) to use in construction of I-80.  Mel Steen, Director of the State’s Games and Parks Commission at the time, is credited with the idea of converting the borrow pits for public recreation. 
  
• July 16, 2008:   Federal Highway Administrator Francis C. “Frank” Turner was on hand as North Dakota celebrated completion of its 352 miles of I-94 on August 7, 1970.  Construction of I-94 had begun with bid letting on December 17, 1956, for a 39-mile segment between Valley City and Jamestown.  The new highway cut 2½ hours off the cross-State trip on U.S. 10.  The ceremony took place in the safety rest areas at Oriska, Apple Creek, and Painted Canyon.  Turner, speaking at Apple Creek, congratulated North Dakota on being one of only three States to have completed its Interstate route from border to border and on dedicating the longest stretch of Interstate completed to date.  “North Dakota is clearly in the lead,” he said.
  
• July 17, 2008:   During the dedication of North Dakota’s I-94 on August 8, 1970, Governor William L. Guy mentioned a message he found on a rest room wall while inspecting rest areas along the route several years earlier.  The message read:  “It seems to me a state that can afford to landscape its Interstate highways can afford to install running water.”  A California resident had signed the message, but a dozen motorists from other States had added their names to it at later dates.  Returning to Bismarck, the Governor stopped by the State Highway Department and said, “It seems to me a state that can afford to landscape its Interstate highways …” As a result of that rest room message, all the State’s rest areas were equipped with running water and heat.  [Source:  “Guy Decides to Heed Handwriting on Wall,” Bismarck Tribune, August 10, 1970.]
  
• July 18, 2008:   On June 18, 1990, Senator John Heinz (D-Pa.) introduced a proposal to rename the Interstate System the “Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System,” with Senators Bob Dole (R-Ks.), Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Ks.), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY.), and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) as cosponsors.  With October 14 marking the centennial of the former President’s birth, Senator Heinz thought it fitting to name the Interstate Highway System after the man who strived so hard to make it a reality.  When Senator John F. Kerry (D-Ma.) introduced an amendment on October 4 changing the name to the “Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways,”  Senator Heinz spoke in support of the measure:  “Among Ike’s many, many lasting contributions to our Nation, none has more profoundly changed the shape of American life than the legacy of a modern system of highways.”  President George H. W. Bush signed the bill on October 15, 1990, one day after the centennial.  (Section 1005 of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 restored the word “National” after the former President’s name.)
  
• July 19, 2008:   The twin-span Delaware Memorial Bridge carries I-295 from Wilmington, Delaware, across the Delaware River to New Jersey.  The first suspension span cost $44 million and opened on August 15, 1951.  It was dedicated to the memory of men and women from Delaware and New Jersey who had lost their lives in World War II.  To meet traffic needs, the two States built a second suspension span.  It cost $77 million and opened on September 12, 1968.  The second span is dedicated to those lost during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
  
• July 20, 2008:   I-95 has made it into songs by artists such as Sheryl Crow (“Maybe Angels”), Joe Ely (“95 South”) Sue Foley (“Baltimore Skyline”), Hammel on Trial (“95 South”), Little Feat (“Let It Roll”), G. Love & Special Sauce (“I-76”), Roger McGuinn (“Southbound 95”), Shawn Mullins (“North on 95”), and John Waite (“I-95”).  In “I-95,” Waite sings: 
  

  I'm so glad I can drive
  Burning down I-95
  It's a simple song of freedom.

  
  
• July 21, 2008:   Illinois completed its 163-mile section of I-80 on January 17, 1968.  The final segment incorporates five miles of the Tri-State Tollway and three miles of the Kingery Expressway.  At an opening ceremony at the intersection with Illinois Route 7, Governor Otto Kerner said the opening was “an historic event for Illinois which is celebrating its sesquicentennial anniversary this year.”
  
• July 22, 2008:   The first leg of the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90/94) opened in Chicago on December 15, 1962.  Governor Otto Kerner said of the 14-lane, 16-mile expressway: “This gives Chicago and its suburbs the finest system of expressways of any city in the world.”  At a luncheon, he gave the scissors he used to cut the ribbon to County Commissioner Ruby Ryan, widow of Dan Ryan, who had served as President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.  The first leg was the portion north of the Chicago Skyway.  The final three-mile leg (147^th Street to Kilpatrick Avenue) opened on December 1, 1970, as part of I-57.
  
• July 23, 2008:   With the opening of a 1.1-mile elevated freeway in Sacramento (16^th Street to Alhambra Boulevard) on June 25, 1968, California completed its section of I-80.  The San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle explained that, “It will be a day of emancipation for Sacramentans who for years have suffered recurring weekend and summer-vacation traffic jams on city streets, and the invective of through travelers¾primarily from the Bay Area¾who create them.”  The newspaper added that, “not a single traffic signal will impede an uninterrupted traffic flow.”
  
• July 24, 2008:   During the ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 18, 1968, opening the final 4½-mile segment of I-10 linking Phoenix and Tucson, Governor Jack Williams called it the most important link in Arizona’s Interstate System.  Participants in the ceremony stressed that I-10 brought the two cities, 113 miles apart, closer, comparing the 100-minute trip on the Interstate with the drive on U.S. 80 that took 2½ to 3 hours.
  
• July 25, 2008:   On November 1, 1968, Delaware became the third State to complete its portion of I-95 (after Connecticut’s 111 miles and New York’s 23 miles).  Its portion of the route is 23 miles long, with 11 miles of a toll section from Newport to the Maryland line (the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway).  The State held a symbolic opening ceremony at the Delaware-Pennsylvania State line on September 23, 1968, as part of the 13^th annual Delaware Highway Day (symbolic because the final section in Wilmington would not be ready for traffic until November).  Governor Charles L. Terry, Jr., said of the opening, “It is a landmark step in Delaware’s continuing effort to link what was once an isolated peninsula with the great market and urban centers that sprawl around us.”
  
• July 26, 2008:   I-684 in Connecticut is the only Interstate without access from the State in which it is located.  The 1.4-mile segment of I-684 in Connecticut is part of a 28-mile route from I-287 in White Plains, New York, to I-84 near Brewster, New York.  The Connecticut segment, which cuts across the southeastern corner of the State in Greenwich County, was opened along with the adjoining stretches in New York from White Plains to U.S. 22 near Amonk on October 30, 1968.  As a headline in the Hartford Times put it, “Our Land, Their Road.”  Built as part of I-87, the route was renumbered I-684 in October 1969. 
  
• July 27, 2008:   The MacVicar Freeway (I-235) was completed in Des Moines, Iowa, on October 30, 1968.  Construction of the 14-mile freeway began in 1959.  At the dedication ceremony, Lt. Governor Robert D. Fulton said, “The happiness associated with the opening of this freeway is about like having a new baby … and, like having a baby, it also will bring with it new responsibilities,” including law enforcement and highway maintenance.  Harry Bradley, Jr., a city native who chaired the Iowa State Highway Commission, said the freeway would save “minutes, dollars, and lives.”
  
• July 28, 2008:   Originally, I-80N (now I-84) was designated to cross I-205 in Portland, Oregon, and end at an I-5 interchange.  Oregon officials planned to build the Mt. Hood Freeway to carry I-80N between I-5 and I-205, but the route proved controversial.  At the request of State and local officials, the Mt. Hood Freeway was withdrawn from the Interstate System in May 1976.  As a result, I-80N ended at I-205.  In late 1983, State transportation officials requested designation of the Banfield Expressway, which had been built in the 1950s before the Interstate program, as the western extension of I-84 to I-5.  The Federal Highway Administration approved the designation on March 8, 1984. 
  
• July 29, 2008:   Until June 4, 1989, I-90 traffic in Seattle crossed Lake Washington on the Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge, which had opened on July 2, 1940.  The Murrow Bridge, named in 1967 after its Chief Engineer and the State’s Director of Highways in the 1930s, was the world’s first concrete floating bridge, with 6,561 feet of roadway carried on 25 pontoons.  On June 4, 1989, the Washington State Department of Transportation opened a parallel seven-lane concrete floating bridge.  It was intended to carry westbound traffic, but initially carried traffic in both directions while the Murrow Bridge was closed for reconstruction.  The new bridge was named in 1993 for Homer M. Hadley, who had conceived the idea of building a floating bridge across the lake.  Flooding destroyed the Murrow Bridge on November 25, 1990, while the reconstruction project was underway.  When the replacement bridge opened on September 12, 1993, the National Society of Professional Engineers included it among the 10 Outstanding Engineering Achievements of 1993. 
  
• July 30, 2008:   A wooden barrier was all that blocked the opening of a 16-mile link in I-95 at the Connecticut/Rhode Island State line.  On December 15, 1964, Governor John N. Dempsey of Connecticut and Governor John H. Chafee of Rhode Island sawed through the barrier like “hardy lumberjacks” (in the words of the Hartford Courant) to open the segment.  The segment from Hopkinton at the State line to the New London area linked with the Connecticut Turnpike to make the State the first to complete its portion of I-95. 
  
• July 31, 2008:   The June/July 2005 issue of American Heritage magazine listed “The Top 10 Makers of the Modern American Summer.”  President Dwight D. Eisenhower was item number 5 for launching the program to build the Interstate System.  “Ike’s legacy of Interstate highways has made the summer road trip a cherished American institution.”
  
• August 1, 2008:   In a Message to Congress on February 28, 1961, President John F. Kennedy described the “vital contribution” the Interstate Program “makes to our security, our safety, and our economic growth.”  Timely completion was essential to security because the Nation’s defense “will always depend, regardless of new weapon developments, on quick motor transportation of men and material from one site to another.”  With 38,000 fatalities on the Nation’s highways in 1960, President Kennedy emphasized that when completed, the Interstate System would save an estimated 4,000 lives a year. Early completion was also essential for the economy:

  This is true not only in terms of the stimulus and employment it provides now, in a time of recession, to such vital industries as steel, construction, cement, and others.  It is also a key to development of more modern and efficient industrial complexes—turning marginal land or clogged cities into attractive sites for commercial or industrial development—and to lower motor transportation costs generally.

  
  
• August 2, 2008:   In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower called for a 10-year program to build the Interstate System, with the funds raised upfront through the sale of bonds.  After choosing a pay-as-you-go financing method involving dedicated highway user taxes, Congress stated in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 that the Interstate System would “be completed as nearly as practicable over a thirteen-year period.”  Therefore, it authorized Interstate Construction funds through Fiscal Year (FY) 1969, with the funds available for expenditure for two years beyond the authorization date to wrap up work.  Thus, the last dollars were available through FY 1971 (June 30, 1971).  As Congress gradually extended authorizations, it also amended the completion date to “fifteen years” (1964 Act), “sixteen years” (1966 Act), “eighteen years” (1968 Act), “twenty years” (1970 Act), and “twenty-three years” (1973 Act).
  
• August 3, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1976 extended authorizations for construction of the Interstate System through Fiscal Year (FY) 1990 (September 30, 1990), with the funds to remain available for two years beyond the authorization date.  To accommodate the extension, the Act changed the number of years for completion to “thirty-four years.”  However, with passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1978 (Title I of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1978), Congress made clear that it wanted the program to end sooner rather than later.  Therefore, the Act specified that, “The Secretary shall not designate any Interstate route or portion thereof under authority of this paragraph after the date of enactment of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1978” (November 6, 1978).  This meant that the Federal Highway Administration could not designate additional routes for development with Interstate Construction (IC) funds. 
  
• August 4, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1981 restricted IC funds to “the construction necessary to provide a minimum level of acceptable service on the Interstate System.” The minimum level of acceptable service consisted of full access control, pavement design to accommodate a 20-year design, essential environmental requirements, no more than six lanes in rural areas and urbanized areas with populations under 400,000, up to eight lanes in urbanized areas with populations of 400,000 or more, and high occupancy lanes included in the Interstate Cost Estimate (ICE) for Fiscal Year 1981. The Act also limited funding to “the actual costs of only those design concepts, locations, geometrics, and other construction features” in the 1981 ICE unless the Secretary determined that a change was required by Federal law.
  
• August 5, 2008:   Although Congress hoped to bring construction of the Interstate System to an end within the limits of funding authorized through Fiscal Year (FY) 1990, additional funds would be needed.  The Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1987 authorized Interstate Construction (IC) funds through FY 1993 and changed the statutory completion time frame to “thirty-seven years.”  One reason for the extension was Section 138, which established that the Central Artery/Tunnel (CA/T) Project in Boston (building a tunnel to replace the I-93/Central Artery viaduct and an I-90 extension through a third harbor tunnel to Logan International Airport) would be eligible for full IC funding except the portion of the Central Artery replacement tunnel between High Street and Causeway Street (the termini of the depressed section).  President Ronald Reagan vetoed the bill, citing the funding levels and its "narrow, individual special interest highway and transit construction projects."  One of these was the CA/THT project, which President Reagan called "unfair because for all other States, the Interstate System was closed to add-ons in 1981."  Congress overrode the veto by one vote in the Senate and it became law on April 2, 1987.
  
• August 6, 2008:   In developing the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1987, Congress thought it was authorizing the final funds for construction of the Interstate System.  If the Members were in any doubt, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) of the Committee on Environment and Public Works and floor manager of the Bill “repeatedly reminded the Senate that this would be the final legislation of the Interstate era, and that in 1991 a new period would begin” (as he recalled in 1991).  As Congress considered that “new era” in 1991, Senator Moynihan acknowledged that more Interstate Construction (IC) funding, totaling $8 billion, was needed for the I-105 Glenn M. Anderson Freeway in Los Angeles and the Central Artery/Tunnel Project in Boston.  Therefore, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 authorized IC funds totaling $7.2 billion through Fiscal Year 1996.  The Act changed the statutory completion time frame to “forty years” and stated that the authorization was “the final authorization of appropriations and apportionments for completion of construction of such System.”  Later legislation has retained the 40-year completion time-frame, without additional IC authorizations, for the 10-year program President Dwight D. Eisenhower had envisioned.
  
• August 7, 2008:  

  In the Disney/Pixar animated film “Cars” (2006), a flashy racecar crossing the country on I-40 is stranded in Radiator Springs, a U.S. Route 66 town that was bypassed in the Southwest by the Interstate.  John Lasseter, the 49-year old director and creative head of Pixar Animation Studio, recalled the early Interstate years: 

  For a lot of our vacations, my brother and sister and I would pile into the station wagon, and our parents would drive Route 66 from L.A.  When they started building the Interstate, my dad would drive it for parts of our journeys and say, “Now we can really make time.”  But the Interstate was so smooth, you’d lose track of where you were.  When you drove Route 66, you really felt the land.  You knew where it was hilly and where it was flat.  On the Interstate it was all flat.  [From Charles Solomon’s “With ‘Cars,’ Pixar Revs Up to Outpace Walt Disney Himself,” The New York Times, May 28, 2006.]

  
  
• August 8, 2008:   In August 1970, Federal Highway Administrator Francis C. “Frank” Turner discussed how the Interstate System was “shrinking” distances between cities by reducing travel time for motor vehicle trips.  “A 2,830-mile journey from New York to Los Angeles, which took 79 hours in 1956 when Interstate mileage was negligible, can now be made in 62 hours by using Interstate routes in the same general corridor.  The 17-hour reduction permits a motorist who drives 8 or 9 hours a day to cross the country in two fewer days.”
  
• August 9, 2008:   On February 22, 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower submitted his proposal on the National Highway Program.  It proposed to finance the Interstate System by issuing bonds to pay the full cost, with the excise tax on gasoline dedicated to their repayment.  The funding proposal found little support in either House of Congress.  Leading the opposition was Senator Harry Flood Byrd (D-Va.), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.  A lifelong highway booster, he had become president in 1908 of the Shenandoah Valley Turnpike Company, which owned and operated a turnpike built in the 1830s between Winchester and Staunton.  He owned an apple orchard and published a newspaper, and served as a State Senator and Governor before joining the Senate.  Throughout his life, he was a lifelong pay-as-you-go man with a nearly pathological hatred of debt, whether personal or public.  Although he strongly supported construction of the Interstate System, his opposition to the President’s financing plan doomed it in the Senate. 
  
• August 10, 2008:   Opposition to the bond financing mechanism proposed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on February 22, 1955, was such that leading Republicans, even those on the Committees on Public Works of the House and Senate, gave it only token support.  It fell to freshman Senator Prescott Bush (R-Ct.) to promote the concept.  Bush, a wealthy investment banker, had been elected to the Senate in 1952 and served on the Subcommittee on Roads.  He understood bonds and could explain how the President’s proposal would work.  However, it was doomed.  He was more successful in supporting apportionment of Interstate Construction funds based on relative need, the concept that was adopted in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.  He also backed legislation to create a position of Federal Highway Administrator, subject to Senate confirmation, to head the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads.  (President Eisenhower signed the legislation, P.L. 84-966, on August 3, 1956.)    Senator Bush retired in 1962, citing poor health, and died on October 8, 1972, from lung cancer.  His son, George H. W. Bush, would become the Nation’s 41st President and his grandson, George W. Bush, the 43rd.
  
• August 11, 2008:   On June 25, 1956, both Houses of Congress acted on the final version of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.  The House of Representatives approved the bill by voice vote.  The Senate voted 89 to 1 in favor of the Bill.  Senator Russell B. Long (D-La.) cast the “no” vote.  He supported increased funding for highways, particularly the Interstate System.  However, he felt the increased taxes were unnecessary.  With the Federal Government predicting a $2 to $3 billion surplus, he said, "all that was needed was a Bill to authorize expanded Federal-aid for highways.”  In his view, the surplus would prompt Congress to cut the income tax, which he believed would mean that "much of the reduction in the income taxes will be financed by additional taxes on highway users."  He believed, in short, that "highway users are already paying enough in taxes for the building of highways."  As a result, Senator Long became the lone dissenter in either House of Congress.
  
• August 12, 2008:   On October 24, 1968, North Carolina dedicated a 23-mile stretch of I-40 through Pigeon River Gorge from Dellwood to the Tennessee State line.  (The companion 15 miles in Tennessee were also dedicated.)  Roadways magazine explained:  “For more than 150 years, man’s efforts to slash a passage through the rugged Pigeon River Gorge in North Carolina’s Southern Appalachian Mountains ended in frustration.  The formidable mountain terrain discouraged engineer after engineer, depleted the coffers of at least two surveying companies seeking a railroad path, and stopped a plank road after it had encroached only six miles.”  The $33 million project required 125 carloads of explosive, 21,758,887 cubic yards of excavation, and three tunnels.  Heavy equipment had to be dismantled, carried in piece-by-piece, and reassembled.  Although the stretch was dedicated, both States had additional work to do before I-40 was open to full traffic.
  
• August 13, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 is rightly celebrated for launching the Interstate Program and creating a financing mechanism and appropriate taxes via the Highway Trust Fund.  However, the Interstate provisions were only part of the 1956 Act.  The Act also authorized Federal-aid highway funds for the primary and secondary systems and their extensions in urban areas, Forest Highways, Forest Development Roads and Trails, roads and trails in National Parks, and Public Lands Highways for Fiscal Years 1957 through 1959; and entitled the Territory of Alaska to receive Federal-aid highway programs under the same conditions as the States.
  
• August 14, 2008:   Although the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 launched the Interstate Program, it contained many provisions related to the Federal-Aid Highway Act.  It directed the Secretary of Commerce to conduct a highway safety study and provide recommendations to Congress on the subject; authorized $30 million for an emergency fund to assist in repair or reconstruction of Federal-aid highways and bridges that have suffered serious damage over a wide area during a natural disaster; provided that placing temporary and permanent geodetic markers in accordance with specifications of the Coast and Geodetic Survey would be eligible for Federal-aid highway funds; authorized the use of Federal-aid highway funds for archeological and paleontological salvage on Federal-aid projects; and stated that in carrying out the provisions of the Act, the Secretary may approve the use photogrammetric methods in mapping.
  
• August 15, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a 40,000-mile National System of Interstate Highways (but without funding or a program to build it).  In signing the legislation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Adequate facilities for highway communication will be essential in the future as a part of an expanding, prosperous economy that will insure jobs.  They will be essential also to the national defense, as well as to the safe and efficient transportation service which belong to America’s way of living.”  He added, “This legislation makes possible the advance planning of the needed facilities on a sound basis.  Now it becomes a challenge to the States, counties and cities which must originate the specific projects and get the program ready for construction after the war ends.”
  
• August 16, 2008:   According to the final Interstate Cost Estimate (1991), the estimated cost of Interstate construction in California was higher than in any other State ($11.3 billion).
  
• August 17, 2008:   The first section of Grand Central Parkway in Queens, New York City, opened in July 1933 (Kew Gardens to Glen Oaks).  The section between Kew Gardens and the Triborough Bridge opened in July 1936.  [Source:  nycroads.com]  The Grand Central Parkway was incorporated into I-278, a three-digit route that never reached its two-digit mainline namesake, I-78.  The planned I-278 link from U.S. 1 to I-78 in New Jersey was withdrawn from the Interstate System on March 20, 1968, under the Howard-Cramer substitution provision (see April 22 I-Fact for information on this withdrawal mechanism).
  
• August 18, 2008:  

  Prior to 1978, the Bureau of Public Roads/Federal Highway Administration had the authority to designate Interstate mileage for development with Interstate construction funds within statutory mileage limits.  Although Section 107(b) of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act ended this authority, the legislation was the first to identify additional Interstate routes for designation.  Section 140 stated that “notwithstanding” Section 107(b), the Secretary of Transportation shall designate within 60 days:

  • California:  20.5 miles of State Route 11 (Harbor Freeway) in Los Angeles from I-10 to SR 47 in San Pedro (became I-110);  
  • New York:  4.2 miles of the Lockport Expressway in Amherst (became I-990 in the Buffalo area); and
  • New York:  5.1 miles of proposed I-481 connecting Exit 34-A of I-90 to the Bear Road Interchange of I-81 in Onondaga County, New York (part of the I-481 loop at Syracuse).
  
  
• August 19, 2008:   I-476 in Pennsylvania is the longest three-digit Interstate route at 122 miles (from I-95 in Chester to I-81 in Clarks Summit). 
  
• August 20, 2008:   The Kansas Highway Commission was reconstructing U.S. 40 from Topeka’s western city limits to the Waubaunsee County line (Valencia Road to Maple Hill Road) when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.  With the new Interstate Construction funds, Kansas completed the eight-mile, two-lane project on November 14, 1956—the first segment completed under the terms of the 1956 Act.  It would serve two-way traffic on future I-70 until construction of two additional lanes.  Kansas completed its 424 miles of I-70 on June 17, 1970 with a ceremony near Goodland.
  
• August 21, 2008:   On August 2, 1956, Missouri became the first State to award a contract under the terms of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.  The contract was for work on U.S. 66 (future I-44) in Laclede County.  A second contract awarded that day for U.S. 40 (I-70, Mark Twain Expressway) in St. Charles County—would be the Nation’s first roadway to go to construction under the terms of the 1956 Act on August 13.  The work—2.6 miles of bridging, grading, and paving from Cole Creek to the Missouri River—was completed in December 1957.  On September 19, 1965, Federal and State officials gathered in Columbia to celebrate completion of Missouri’s 252-mile I-70.  As one account put it, “At the late afternoon ceremonies at Columbia’s new Parkade Plaza, the rain stole the show from such names as Governor Warren E. Hearnes, Senator Edward Long, Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton and Secretary of Commerce John T. Connor.”  When rain began as the ceremony was to start at 4:30, the dignitaries headed for cover.  The dedication was completed at a dinner for 500 at a nearby motel.
  
• August 22, 2008:  

  On April 14, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a National Interregional Highway Committee to investigate the need for a limited system of national highways, advise the Federal Works Administrator on the desirable character of such improvements, and evaluate the possibility of using ex-soldiers and freed industrial capacity in the development of the new system after the ongoing defense emergency was over.  The members were:

  Thomas H. MacDonald, Commissioner, U.S. Public Roads Administration
  G. Donald Kennedy, Michigan’s State Highway Commissioner
  The Honorable Bibb Graves, former Governor of Alabama
  Charles M. Purcell, California State Highway Engineer
  Frederic A. Delano, Chairman, National Resources Planning Board
  Harland Bartholomew, City Planner, St. Louis, Missouri
  Rexford G. Tugwell, Chairman, New York City Planning Commission

  
  
• August 23, 2008:   At the first meeting of the National Interregional Highway Committee on June 24, 1941, the members elected U.S. Commissioner of Public Roads, Thomas H. MacDonald, to be chairman.  He appointed his top aide, Herbert S. Fairbank, secretary.  Three members of the committee played little or no role.  Former Governor Bibb Graves of Alabama died; Rexford G. Tugwell was appointed Governor of Puerto Rico; and Frederic A. Delano withdrew from an active role.  The committee finished its work in 1941, but its report (written mainly by Fairbank) was delayed until President Franklin D. Roosevelt transmitted it to Congress on January 12, 1944, with his transmittal letter endorsing the recommendations.  Congress acted on the report in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, which authorized designation of a 40,000-mile “National System of Interstate Highways,” but without a financing mechanism or commitment.
  
• August 24, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1952 authorized the first funds for the Interstate System--$25 million a year for Fiscal Years 1954 and 1955.  The Federal-State matching share was 50-50.  President Harry S. Truman signed the bill on June 25, 1952.  The token funding for the Interstate System was less than highway interests had hoped for, but with the Korean War underway, it was the best Congress could do.  Executive Vice President Eugene Reybold of the American Roads Builders’ Association said, “I am glad that a step has been taken to provide for the development of the important Interstate System.  The $25 million authorized is sadly inadequate, but it gives recognition to a critical problem.”
  
• August 25, 2008:   After Thomas H. MacDonald, who had headed the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads from 1919 to 1953, died on April 7, 1957, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) created an award in his name to honor lifetime achievement.  In Chicago for AASHO’s annual meeting, D. C. Greer, Texas State Highway Engineer, presented the first Thomas H. MacDonald Award to MacDonald’s longtime aide, Herbert S. Fairbank, on November 18, 1957.  In summarizing Fairbank’s lifetime of achievement, Greer cited Toll Roads and Free Roads (1939) and Interregional Highways (1944), the reports that provided the conceptual framework for the Interstate System.  In accepting the award, Fairbank said of MacDonald, “If ever a man deserved the name of prophet it was he.  If ever a public servant could truly boast of an administration of the people’s business virtually without flaw, it was he.  If ever in any man there can be combined just that conjunction of the qualities of the able engineer, the perceptive political economist, the skilled diplomatist, and the sure and faithful administrator, that it takes to make a great highway engineer, it was in Thomas H. MacDonald that these qualities found their rarest blending.”
  
• August 26, 2008:  

  The shortest Interstates are:

  I-110 in El Paso, Texas:  0.94 miles
  I-315 in Great Falls, Montana:  0.82 miles
  I-980 in Oakland, California:  0.80 miles
  I-395 in Baltimore, Maryland:  0.72 miles
  I-878 in New York City:  0.70 miles

  
  
• August 27, 2008:   In the view of many, Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” conveys the mystique of an Interstate road trip the best:  Get your motor running/Head out on the highway/Looking for adventure/In whatever comes our way.  Many other lesser known songs speak to this feeling.  For example, Little Feat’s “Drivin’ Blind” sums up the experience:  Roll down the window/The freeway is clear/Suddenly all my passions re-appear.  But perhaps Susan Cowsill’s “I Know You Know (Love)” puts the feeling in its simplest form:  Isn't this a perfect day?/Everybody let me change lanes/On the freeway.
  
• August 28, 2008:   On May 18, 2006, Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta joined officials from Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia to dedicate the first span of the new 1.1-mile Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge to carry the I-95/495/Capital Beltway across the Potomac River.  The new bridge will be owned by the three jurisdictions, unlike the existing bridge, which was owned by the Federal Highway Administration.  The new span, which began carrying its first traffic on June 11, will carry traffic in both directions until the old bridge is removed so a second span can be built in its place. 
  
• August 29, 2008:   The first segment of what is now the Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) in Chicago, from Mannheim Road to First Avenue, opened on December 21, 1954.  The final segment, from Soffel Avenue to Madison Street, opened on December 18, 1961.  In 1964, the City Council decided to name the expressway, then part of I-90, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  “Eisenhower’s response was lukewarm,” according to reporter William Mullen.  “Chicago reporters who sought him out for a comment found him vacationing at the El Dorado Country Club in Palm Desert, Calif.  His brief statement, issued through a secretary, was ‘I am highly complemented by the action of the city council and the mayor and express my appreciation to anyone connected with this thought.’”  (The Eisenhower Expressway became I-290 in July 1977.)  [Mullen, William, “Road Warriers,” Sunday, The Chicago Tribune Magazine, October 20, 1985]
  
• August 30, 2008:   From the start, the Interstate System has been credited with many benefits, but the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, identified an unexpected benefit in the issue of January 27, 1964.  “[D]evelopment of the Interstate highway system around Sioux Falls is helping to curtail bruising of livestock.”  A spokesperson for the 6th Annual Livestock Truckers’ Recognition Day explained that “use of the Interstate by truckers eliminates the many stops at crossroads and in-city stoplights and causes less jostling and bruising of cattle.” 
  
• August 31, 2008:   In July 1964, construction of I-91 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, was halted when workers found dinosaur tracks that may have been 180 million years old in the highway’s path.  The footprint was 14 inches long and a foot wide, with the third toe missing. 
  
• September 1, 2008:   In September 1965, Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton (1961-1966) described the changing attitudes toward highway location as the Interstate System spread across the country.  “Highway construction has come a long way since the days when the transportation of people and goods was a road’s sole function.  There is no doubt that while they continue to serve that purpose, highway builders exercising social responsibility will construct roads which are aesthetically attractive and a force for improving the social and economic health of the American people.”
  
• September 2, 2008:   The Maine Turnpike was the second modern turnpike, after the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  The Maine Turnpike Authority (MTA) was established in 1941.  Following World War I, the MTA issued bonds to finance construction.  The initial four-lane section opened on December 13, 1947, between Kittery and South Portland.  The turnpike extension to Augusta via Lewiston was completed on December 13, 1955.  In August 1957, the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads incorporated two sections of the Maine Turnpike (Kittery to northwest of Portland, and Gardiner to Augusta, a total of 60 miles) into the Interstate System, but provided for a more direct, toll-free connection between Portland and Gardiner.  The two turnpike segments and the toll-free section became I-95.  In August 1987, the turnpike between Portland and Gardiner was designated I-495.  However, in October 2002, the numbering was revised to reflect the motorists’ point of view.  The I-95 designation was transferred to former I-495 while the former I-95 between Portland and Gardiner became I-295. 
  
• September 3, 2008:   The 1.4-mile, four-lane Harbor Tunnel Thruway (part of I-895) opened across the Patapsco River in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 29, 1957.  By eliminating passage on city streets with 51 traffic signals, the tunnel helped reduce the “Baltimore Bottleneck” for East Coast traffic.  More than 23.5 million vehicles used the tunnel in the most recent fiscal year.
  
• September 4, 2008:   The northern terminus of the 1,786-mile I-75 is the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge across the St. Mary’s River between Michigan and Ontario, Canada.  On the Canadian side, the bridge is the southern terminus of Highway 17, Ontario’s main link in the 5,000-mile Trans-Canada Highway.  Considered one of Michigan’s five monumental bridges, the International Bridge opened on October 31, 1962.  (The southern terminus of I-75 is State Route 826 (Palmetto Expressway) at State Route 924 (Gratigny Parkway) in Miami, Florida.)
  
• September 5, 2008:   The I-80 Allegheny River Bridge between Clintonville and Emlenton, Pennsylvania, is the highest bridge in the State. The deck is 271 feet over the water. 
  
• September 6, 2008:   I-90, the transcontinental highway from Boston to Seattle, was completed twice.  The first time was on September 12, 1991, when a $40-million viaduct bypassing Wallace, Idaho, opened.  Completion of the viaduct diverted Interstate traffic from the widely publicized "last stoplight on I-90" (at Seventh and Bank Streets in Wallace).  However, an extension of I-90 in Boston from I-93 to Logan International Airport was part of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project.  The extension opened in stages.  The Ted Williams Tunnel opened in December 1995; the Leverett Circle Connector opened in October 1999; and on January 17, 2003, the I-90 Connector opened east and westbound to the Ted Williams Tunnel, Logan Airport, and State Route 1A opened in East Boston.
  
• September 7, 2008:  

  The Penn-Lincoln Parkway (I-376) was dedicated on June 5, 1953, the first modern expressway in the Pittsburgh area. 

  
  
• September 8, 2008:   President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s financing plan for the Interstate System called for a Federal share of 90 percent.  The States had stated that they did not want to be forced to increase their taxes to pay for this national priority.  With the Federal Government paying 90 percent of the cost, the States’ share would equal the amount they would pay under the 60-40 Federal-State matching ratio established for the $175 million a year that the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1954 had authorized for the Interstate System.  Although Congress rejected the President’s financing plan, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 retained the 90-10 Federal-State matching ratio. 
  
• September 9, 2008:   The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a 40,000-mile “National System of Interstate Highways.”  The U.S. Public Roads Administration (now the Federal Highway Administration) worked with the State highway agencies to select the routes.  On March 28, 1946, Nebraska became the first State to accept its integrated Interstate System. 
  
• September 10, 2008:   On April 6, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed H.R. 4263, naming I-195 in New Jersey the "James J. Howard Interstate Highway" (from I-295 in Trenton to NJ 34) after the late Chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee.  The President said that Chairman Howard, who had died on March 25, was being honored for his "untiring efforts to bring this country a modern network of highway and mass transit projects."
  
• September 11, 2008:   In April 1970, Secretary of Transportation John Volpe agreed to shift I-75 in Florida 300 feet to avoid disturbing an eagle's nest in a 50-foot pine tree on the banks of the Manatee River, northeast of Bradenton.  A bald eagle couple moved into the nest each fall and departed as soon as their eaglets became airborne.  The shift, according to Federal Highway Administrator Francis C. “Frank” Turner, pointed up the value of the public hearing process.  "The eagle's nest was called to official attention during the initial public hearings on the extension of Interstate 75 from Tampa to Miami.  The route was moved without a murmer of dissent, for everyone wants to do all he can to try to preserve this symbolic American bird which is on the verge of extinction."
  
• September 12, 2008:   Interstate 5th Anniversary:  On June 29, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1961, which permanently increased the gas tax to 4 cents to support Interstate construction.  He signed the legislation “with the greatest pleasure,” explaining that the revenue assured “the Federal Government can continue with the construction of the new highway system, a system which will increase our defense readiness, decrease the appalling highway accident toll, lower transportation costs, and stimulate economic development.”  The President used several pens to sign the law, giving them to congressional leaders and Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton.  Whitton, whose family still has the pen, would say of it, “It is not an expensive pen, but it is the most important one I ever owned, for it was an instrument of writing a solution to the highway financing crisis which has bothered so many of us for several years.”
  
• September 13, 2008:   Interstate 10th Anniversary:  For the 10th Anniversary of the Interstate System, the Associated Press (AP) distributed an article about “Highways Greatest Peacetime Program.”  Motorists could, AP said, “travel as much as 1,328½ miles without hitting a traffic light,” based on the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads’ calculation of a trip from West Campton in New Hampshire’s White Mountains to Tomah, Wisconsin (toll booths were the only obstructions).  The new highways increased safety—“if you don’t punish the accelerator too mercilessly you will be three times safer on the new highways than the old-fashioned ones.”  To convey the scale of Interstate construction, AP said, “Total excavation will move enough dirt and rock to blanket Connecticut knee-deep.  Sand, gravel and crushed stone for the construction would build a mound 50 feet wide and 9 feet high completely around the world.  The concrete would build six sidewalks to the moon; the tar and asphalt would build driveways for 35 million homes.”
  
• September 14, 2008:   Interstate 20th Anniversary:  Because the 20th Anniversary, June 29, 1976, was so close to the Nation’s Bicentennial on July 4, 1976, the anniversary appears to have received little note.  However, the Federal Highway Administration published its Bicentennial history, America’s Highways 1776-1976, which includes detailed information about the evolution of the Interstate System.  The New York Times noted the occasion with an article on November 14, 1976, by William K. Stevens.  In Topeka, Kansas, near the first Interstate segment (part of I-70) completed under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Stevens stated that no bands would play, no birthday parties were planned, not even “here in the wide open spaces, where superhighways are not only an inseparable part of the free life but almost an article of faith.”  He added, “That is perhaps one measure of how thoroughly taken for granted, and how deeply embedded in American life, the greatest public works project in history (so it is called) has become.” 
  
• September 15, 2008:   Interstate 30th Anniversary: Nearly 500 transportation construction executives gathered on May 20, 1986, at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington for "Interstate Nite," a celebration of the Interstate's 30th Anniversary sponsored by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association.  Federal Highway Administrator Ray Barnhart and five of his predecessors attended (John Volpe, Frank Turner, Norbert Tiemann, Karl Bowers, and John Hassell).  Barnhart said of the Interstate System, “It’s importance to industry, commerce, the economy and recreation and travel cannot be overstated.”  On June 26, designated by President Ronald Reagan as “National Interstate Highway Day,” Barnhart joined congressional leaders and industry figures for a celebration on Capitol Hill.  Susan Eisenhower, the former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s granddaughter, said, “He was committed to a strong Interstate transportation network and never doubted that it would happen, and I think this would have been one of his proudest moments.”
  
• September 16, 2008:   Interstate 40th Anniversary:  In San Francisco, Federal Highway Administrator Rodney Slater began a road tour on June 7, 1996, to celebrate the Interstate System’s 40th Anniversary.  His trip across the country roughly paralleled, in reverse order, the U.S. Army’s first transcontinental motor vehicle convoy, which took two months to travel from Washington, DC, to San Francisco in 1919.  On the convoy, a young officer named Dwight D. Eisenhower gained his first understanding of the need for good roads.  In Washington on June 26, Slater joined industry and congressional leaders in a gala sponsored by the American Highway Users Alliance in a tent near the Zero Milestone on the Ellipse, the starting point of the 1919 convoy.  Vice President Al Gore, whose father Senator Al Gore, Sr. (D-Tn.) was a chief author of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, said of the Interstate System that, “It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance of this investment . . . .  The Interstate highway System has literally changed the way we work and the way we live.” 
  
• September 17, 2008:   The Leonard B. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge on I-93 in Boston includes diamond-shaped holes that allow sunlight to filter down to the Charles River to guide alewife (also known as mulhaden, grey herring, golden shad) to their seasonal spawning pools up-river. 
  
• September 18, 2008:   In Parade magazine for October 20, 2002, the Sunday supplement’s weekly column, “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade,” answered this question from J.T. of Middlebury, Vermont:  “In your opinion, which President made the greatest achievements in the 20th century?”  Scott presented “a nonpartisan Top 10, in chronological order”:  Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.  For President Eisenhower, Scott listed as his major achievement: “Interstate Highway System.”
  
• September 19, 2008:   The first expressway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, opened on January 27, 1962.  During the ribbon cutting ceremony, Governor Gaylord Nelson hailed the 4.86-mile segment of the Milwaukee County Expressway (I-94) as a “marvelous asset” to the area.  According to an account in the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads newsletter, “Following the ribbon cutting, the parade of officials proceeded to drive all links—from Wisconsin Avenue south to National Avenue and back to the stadium interchange; east to 16th Street and then west to the exit at N. 68th Street and W. Stevenson Street.”
  
• September 20, 2008:   Congressman George H. Fallon (D-Md.), one of the chief authors of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, was on hand as Governor J. Milliard Tawes and other officials opened a five-mile section of the Jones Falls Expressway (I-83) in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 2, 1962.  With the opening of the segment from Cold Spring Lane to the Baltimore Beltway, motorists could travel from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to the center of Baltimore without encountering a traffic light.
  
• September 21, 2008:   H-1 in Honolulu, Hawaii, between Pele and Ernest Streets, crosses the slopes of Punchbowl, the crater of an extinct volcano.  This section of H-1 is depressed to go under Ward Avenue.  The August 1968 issue of Pacific Roadbuilder and Engineering Review explained that, “The outstanding feature of the project will be the landscaped terraces which will be built into the banks along the higher side of the depressed portion . . . .  These banks will be landscaped with trees and shrubs, illuminated at night by recessed lighting, and made available to pedestrians by stairways at three locations.”  The “garden platforms” were the idea of Albert C. Zane, Chief of the Highways Division of the Hawaii Department of Transportation.  “Without special treatment,” he explained, “this side would present a large, dull blank surface of concrete for we must provide means of retaining cuts for a roadbed as much as 45 feet below neighboring land.”  He added that the other side of the roadway did not require a deep cut, but would be landscaped as well.
  
• September 22, 2008:   Construction Breakthroughs, Part 1 of 2: Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton (1961-1966) was a pivotal figure in saving the Interstate System from early critics who wanted to halt the program.  The October/November 1966 issue of Caterpillar World (published by the equipment manufacturer) contained one of his last interviews before leaving office on December 31, 1966.  Asked what “major breakthroughs” had occurred in road-building techniques during the first ten years of the Interstate program, Whitton replied:  “There have been a number of breakthroughs.  Highway engineering productivity has been greatly increased through application of the electronic computer, aerial photography, photogrammetry and surveying instruments.  Fast, non-destructive testing methods are more widely used, thereby reducing delays to contractors.”  To be continued…
  
• September 23, 2008:   Construction Breakthroughs, Part 2 of 2:  This is the second part of Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton’s reply to a question on construction breakthroughs resulting from the Interstate System:  “Slip-form pavers increase production of concrete pavements.  More powerful, faster grading equipment has increased production and kept costs down.  Portable bituminous concrete plants are reducing haul time.  Electronic controls on batch plants, grading equipment and pavers are increasing accuracy.  A new rock-splitting technique enables contractors to blast rock cuts to conform more closely to plans, thus reducing both the quantity of material to be moved, and the amount of scaling to be done.  Production cost studies provide data on delays and nonproductive time.  New compaction equipment that uses vibration and allows the operator to change tire pressures without stopping expedites work on embankments, bases and surfaces.  Wider use of standard plans … and prefabrication of steel and concrete structures also increases productivity.”