Interstate Highway Act history

Technically, the name of this legislation was the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, one of a series of laws passed over a 50-year period that created the federal highway system. The word “interstate” is used to distinguish it from its predecessors because this act created the interstate highway system currently spanning the United States—a roadway that stretched coast-to-coast rather than simply from city to city as the older model provided.

The first federal highway act was passed in 1916 and designated $50 million to be used to create a system of rural roads to be used for mail delivery. The program originally was known as the Lincoln Highway, and it linked many existing roads rather than building new ones to complement them. In 1923, the program was expanded to include a series of highways designed to link major cities. Federal money was matched by states in order to build the roads. The government allocated about $75 million per year during the 1920s to the program. The program was enhanced when federal highways were extended into urban areas, and secondary roads were added in the 1930s and 1940s. The interstate system was authorized in 1944, but funding and work did not begin seriously until the 1950s.

Interstate highways originally were envisioned as part of the national defense system during the Eisenhower administration. The president remembered the terrible condition of the country’s road system at the end of World War I and advocated upgrading highway transportation even more than it had been in the 35 years since that war ended. It was viewed both as an economicand defense-related issue. The system encompassed 42,500 miles of new highway at a cost of $25 billion, with the federal government assuming 90 percent of the cost. The 1956 act called for uniform design standards. The project became the largest public works project in American history and is responsible for many distinct changes in the nature of American life. It aided the expansion of the economy that began in the 1950s and enabled truck transportation to supplant RAILROADS as the major method of transporting freight, and the automobile as the preferred way of transporting people. When the STAGGERS RAIL ACT was passed in 1980, it was an acknowledgment that truck transport of freight had overtaken the railroads as the major source of long-distance hauling. One result was the eventual demise of the INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION, the agency originally created to regulate the railroads; it was replaced by the Surface Transportation Board in 1996.

Many unique American developments can also be traced to the increased use of the automobile and truck, including shopping malls, the decline of inner cities, and the general trend toward the suburbs after World War II. The development of the first mass-scale housing development at LEVITTOWN, Long Island, in the 1950s was testimony to the rise of car and truck transportation.

U.S. Interstate Highway System

Further reading

Lewis, Tom. Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highway, Transforming American Life. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Rose, Mark. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939–1989. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
———. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1941–1956. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1979.