Search title image

TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

July/August 2006

Birthday Party on Wheels for the Interstate Highway System

Federal, state and local officials gathered at San Francisco’s Lincoln Park on a bright morning in mid-June to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Interstate Highway System.

The scenic site has an important place in U.S. transportation history, as the endpoint for the 1919 First Transcontinental Motor Train. The arduous 62-day, 3,250-mile journey by several dozen military vehicles from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco helped forge the vision for a network of modern, uniform highways linking the country from coast to coast. At the ceremony this June, Lincoln Park again made history, this time as the starting point for a motorcade destined to retrace the route of the 1919 Motor Train, albeit in reverse, and at a speedier pace.

A highlight of the anniversary convoy was a big rig emblazoned with a portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who not only participated in the First Transcontinental Motor Train as a young Army lieutenant colonel, but also — as the nation’s 34th president — signed the bill authorizing the National System of Interstate Highways in 1956.

“This act did more to bring Americans together than almost any other law of the last century,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta told the crowd.
— Brenda Kahn

Posing in front of the truck are descendants of two people considered “fathers” of the Interstate Highway System: Merrill Eisenhower Atwater (left), great-grandson of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Andrew Firestone (right), great-grandson of Harvey Firestone, founder of Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. Representing the military, which also played a role in conceiving the Interstate System, is U.S. Army Colonel David McClean (middle). Photo: John Huseby, Caltrans

Contents