After World War I ended, then Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower took part in a cross-country convoy on the new Lincoln Highway -- the nation's first transcontinental highway from Times Square in New York City to San Francisco. This was partly a celebration of victory and also to show the need for much better roads. It took his 280 men and 72 vehicles two months to make the trip.
This set the need for what became Eisenhower's interstate system in his mind.
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HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION GETS FEDERAL SUPPORT
While the states were initially finding the interstate infrastructure projects, there was a growing call for the federal government to step in. That wouldn't happen until 1944 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act that outlined a plan to build a 40,000 mile national interstate system of highways.
With World War II raging, however, there was no money available for the project which left everything essentially at a standstill until the 1950s, when the former Army officer Dwight D. Eisenhower took office as U.S. president, just under 7,000 miles of the project had been built.
--RoadDog
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