Interstate Highway System

5/1/26

Overview

Seventy years ago, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, the law that funded the construction of the highways that changed how we live, work, and travel. Join Active Minds as we explore how the Interstate Highway System was built, its key routes, and the history behind its creation under President Eisenhower. We’ll also look at how these roads shaped communities and the American landscape. Join us for an engaging journey across the nation’s most important network of roads.

Key Lecture Points

  • The Interstate Highway System is the complicated legacy of trails blazed by Native Americans, wagon trails, makeshift early auto roads, and planned highways, all adapted to the use of a nationally-planned network.  Like the great road systems of past empires (e.g. Ancient Rome), the US Interstate Highways serve both a military and a commercial purpose.
  • Once the US became a continental power in 1848 with the acquisition of California, the nation sought transportation options that would afford transcontinental travel, as well as interconnectedness within the vast territory of the nation as a whole.  While the nation’s railway systems did meet (and continue to meet) that challenge, the invention of the internal combustion engine introduced a new mode of transportation, the automobile, that would demand a broader roadway system.
  • In the early 20th Century, Americans began to adopt the automobile as a chosen mode of transportation, the roads of the nation were not capable of accommodating lengthy trips.  After US engagement in WWI, in 1919 the US Army undertook an exploration of cross-country travel. The journey, including a young Dwight Eisenhower, took 62 days.
  • After WWII, President Eisenhower, inspired by both the challenge of his 1919 journey as well as the efficiency of the German highway system, pushed for Congress to pass legislation to create a interconnected highway system in the US.  In 1956, Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act with an initial funding of $25 billion to construct the new system.  36 years later, in 1992, the Interstate Highway System was declared completed with the opening of a complicated stretch of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon, Colorado.  The system took 36 years to complete at a cost of more than $600 billion.
  • Although the Interstate Highway system has been transformative addition to the nation’s economy and social structure, it is not without its challenges. Its construction in urban areas targeted and split many lower income communities of color, a problem that many cities continue to address. Also, the system is a significant contributor to air, water and noise pollution. Lastly, as the system marks its 70th Anniversary, it is faced with the significant cost of repair and maintenance.

Discussion Questions

  • How did earlier kinds of transit (rail, non-Interstate roads) affect the development of the Interstate Highway System?
  • How did the Interstate Highway System shape American culture over the last 70 years?
  • Have you taken a road trip on a highway? How is driving on a highway different from traveling on an Interstate?
  • Do you remember what Denver or some other city was like before the Interstates were built? How did Interstates change the city?
  • What did America gain by building the Interstate Highway System? What did it lose?

More to Explore

  • US Department of Transportation History of the Interstate Highway System Click here

Books For Further Reading

  • Jensen, Jamie. Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways. Moon Travel, 2024. 968 pages. A thorough, full-color guide to 11 routes along American highways, including “The Loneliest Road,” which passes through Colorado.
  • Lewis, Tom. Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life (Updated Edition). Cornell, 2013. 416 pages. A readable, scholarly account of the ways the Interstate Highway system has transformed American culture.
  • Lieb, Emily. Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Wrecked Baltimore. U of Chicago, 2025. 240 pages. A carefully-researched public history of the effects of Interstate Highway plans on the City of Baltimore.