Down a Ribbon of Highway

Throughout the 1960s, the Government marshaled extraordinary resources to accomplish a pair of Promethean feats: Americans were dispatched to the moon, and the country was overlaid with a brand-new web of nonstop superhighways. The space program remains a source of national pride. The Interstate Highway System? Most people take it for granted, except when they hit an unfinished stretch and find themselves rerouted along old, slow roads. Yet the Interstate has had a singularly profound effect on the way Americans live.

A comprehensive system of national highways was clearly necessary by the 1930s. In 1944, Congress, recognizing that a high-speed federal highway system had military value as well, made it eligible for federal funds. But the states were reluctant to pay their 50% shares. Finally, in 1956, at President Eisenhower's urging, the Federal Government got serious: 41,000 miles were mandated (1,944 more were authorized later), with 90% of the cost to be federally subsidized. Since then some $175 billion has been spent, and an average of 45,000 people have been working full time building Interstate highways. During the '60s, the system grew 40 miles a week.

More than 1,500 miles in 46 states remain unfinished.

Some gaps have resulted from environmentalist victories. Highway planners in Memphis always assumed they would get permission to run Interstate 40 through the 342-acre

Overton Park downtown, and so the road was built almost to its borders. Finally, however, the Department of Transportation decided against the park route. No one knows how or if the 3.5-mile gap will be completed.

In other cities, the Interstate went through unimpeded, but with ill effects. During the 1960s old oak trees lining Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans were uprooted to clear the way for Interstate 10. What had been a street known for its black professionals' offices became a seedy strip.

Hamlets were cut off by the vagaries of Interstate routes. Along South Carolina's old Highway 301, prosperous towns like Olanta (pop. 700), eight miles off the new Interstate 95, quickly withered. Explains Mortician and Olanta Mayor J. Kelton Floyd: "In 1963, during one three-month period, we shipped 27 bodies out of state. Last year we didn't do one."

Perhaps just as many communities boomed, however, thanks to their proximity to the Interstate. Suburbs and then exurbs grew as the Interstates made possible long daily commutes. A nation of indefatigable cross-country travelers could thoroughly indulge its passion for movement. Still, this remarkable, concrete achievement rarely inspires pride or awe. A high-speed trip down an Interstate, its fringes bare of shops and homes, is seldom rich with incident. Life begins at the exit ramp. Rosemarie Clark knows; she maps travel routes for members of the A.A.A. in Topeka, Kans. Says Clark: "We get a lot of people who come in and say, 'No Interstates.' They want to see America." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.