Linda Hall Library exhibit celebrates 60th anniversary of U.S. interstate system.
Most Americans are too young to remember the discouraging roads that confronted long-distance travelers before President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act, enabling the creation of the U.S. Interstate Highway System in 1956.
Sixty years later, the virtually completed system’s 47,500 miles of interconnected divided highways continues to promote safety and expediency for motorists while maintaining a vital impact on the nation’s way of life.
[block pos=”right”] While the interstates boosted general prosperity, they also brought about suburban sprawl and the untimely demise of communities that found themselves in the path of the eminent-domain bulldozer. [/block]
“The interstate system is remarkably effective at modernizing, connecting and transforming areas,” said highway historian Dan McNichol, author of The Roads That Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System.” There’s just nothing like it. The interstates made our country wealthy and very secure, but once something gets done, people move on.”
But not McNichol, who will invite folks to appreciate the interstate system’s magnificent achievement and the road ahead when he gives the opening-night lecture for the exhibition, “Ribbons Across the Land: Building the U.S. Interstate Highway System,” on Sept. 22 at the Linda Hall Library of science, engineering and technology. An accompanying exhibit, “Gas, Food, Lodging,” will take a nostalgic look at the rise and fall of legendary motorway Route 66.
The historical resonance of addressing the topic in Kansas City — on the border of the two states where the interstate system was born — inspires McNichol, who is descended from five generations of American road builders.
“It’s fun to think that the very first contract signed to start building the interstate system was done in Missouri, and it was to upgrade a section of Route 66 to I-44,” McNichol said. “I think that’s almost poetic.
“And Kansas finished the first section (of I-70) that began under the highway act. The project in Missouri was underway and the first one to lay down pavement, but Kansas was the first state to finish a contract.”
America’s vast interstate system didn’t just spring up. It was the culmination of a combination of driving forces over decades, beginning with the Good Roads Movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement was initially aimed at improving bicycle travel, until automobiles began dominating the landscape in the 1920s and demand for better roads picked up speed.
“Roads have always been an important part of our nation’s history,” said Eric Ward, curator of “Ribbons Across the Land” and vice-president of public programs and exhibitions at the Linda Hall Library. “The library has in its collection the story of the building of the U.S. transportation system through the centuries, leading to the interstates. We will showcase archival materials, civil engineering documents and books that tell that story and history.”
A Sign of Civilization
The popularity of the library’s 2014 exhibit on the building of the Panama Canal left a strong desire for another exhibit devoted to a colossal engineering challenge.
“Originally, we wanted to get our arms around the whole problem of the country’s crumbling infrastructure,” said Linda Hall Library President Lisa Brower. “But we realized it was too big a theme for us to cover in one or two exhibitions — with roads, bridges, railroads, the electrical grid, water and sewer systems and even telecommunications.”
When Ward suggested focusing on the interstate system and pegging it to the 60th anniversary of the highway bill, plans for “Ribbons Across the Land” were set in motion. He knew that he wanted the exhibit to be chronological and show how each leap in American travel technology helped to refine the country’s identity.
“We looked upon our early railway system as a sign of civilization,” Ward said. “This was before the roads, before the interstates.”
A key episode in the pre-interstate story occurred in 1919, when Eisenhower, as a participant in the U.S. Army’s first cross-country motor convoy, had his eyes opened to the potentials of highway travel.
Later, as Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, he saw how the autobahn highway network gave German forces a logistical edge. By the time he was elected president, Eisenhower was committed to building an unparalleled highway system to take America into the flourishing future.
“There’s a lot of confusion around where the interstate system idea began and who was most responsible for it,” McNichol said. “But it’s very clear to me that, at the exact right moment, Eisenhower said to this country: We need to greenfield this project. We need a new system.
“He would say we are suffering from fatalities on the highways — it’s a bloodbath; we are suffering from a lockdown in commerce — it’s killing us economically; we are suffering from the inability to meet a threat to national security. He just messaged that over and over throughout his first term. And then, finally, on June 29, 1956, at Walter Reed Hospital — while in a hospital bed, with no photographers, no fanfare — he signed the legislation that launched the interstate system.”
While the interstates boosted general prosperity, they also brought about suburban sprawl and the untimely demise of communities that found themselves in the path of the eminent-domain bulldozer. Such a community was Strawberry Hill in Kansas City, Kan., which is to be represented in “Ribbons Across America” with photos taken before and after construction of I-70.
“Eisenhower imagined ring roads around the cities of America, and not this obliteration of the downtowns and neighborhoods and industrial areas and parklands,” McNichol said. But the urban cores were desperate during the ’60s and ’70s, with white flight and urban decay. And, politically, the interstate highways were seen as investments in the cities. But what they really did was take away taxpayer bases. So it was more destructive to areas where you didn’t want that destructivity. You didn’t want to take away a large footprint in a dense urban environment, but that’s what the interstate highways ended up doing.”
The Road Ahead Is Rail
Despite his awe for the interstate system, McNichol believes it’s more than a possibility that Americans will forgo cars as their favored mode of transportation in the decades ahead.
“Today, the older generation is still stuck in a car,” McNichol said.” But the millennials choose where they live by the transit map. Even if they move out to the suburbs, it’s going to be a streetcar suburb. It’s going to be somewhere where there are choices.”
The big decision down the road for the U.S., McNichol said, will not be whether to become a nation of fast-train riders, but how soon to make it happen.
“Sure, we might be exploring Jupiter, but the real excitement on the ground is going to be a fast train in this country,” he said. “Because they already exist in China, Japan and Europe. The fast-train connection is the third leg of the three-legged stool that we do not have. We have a two-legged stool. We have aviation and we have roads. We do not have high-speed passenger rail service that takes you between cities and even states.
“Cars are going to be like bicycles in the cities that today have shared-bike programs. One day, you’ll jump out of your high-speed train from San Francisco to Los Angeles, grab a car that’s floating by and move about. It’s going to happen. It’s going to pop. That’s the really exciting future.”
“Ribbons Across the Land: Building the U.S. Interstate Highway System” and “Gas, Food, Lodging,” open Sept. 22 and continue through March 11 at the Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry St. Admission is free. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the second Saturday of each month. For more information, 816.363.4600 or www.lindahall.org
