‐ [Narrator] It’s nearly 50,000 miles long,
three times the size of the Great Wall of China,
with over 700 billion miles traveled every year.
But a century ago, interstate highways don’t exist.
‐ Mr. President, imagine a highway system
allowing us to drive anywhere and everywhere in America.
‐ The first transcontinental car trip took 63 days.
Today, it takes 45 hours.
‐ [Narrator] The road to building it is bumpy‐
‐ Runs right into the heart of the Rockies.
‐ [Narrator] Requiring massive engineering.
‐ They moved 26 million tons of soil and rock.
‐ [Narrator] It’s more expensive than 2,000 Hoover Dams‐
‐ It’s an investment in the future growth
of the United States of America!
‐ [Narrator] With enough pavement
for three round‐trips to the moon.
The decades‐long struggle leaves some ruined
and some dead. (man shouting)
(rock crashing)
But the unsung visionaries behind the highway
stop at nothing to make it a reality.
‐ He saw road‐building as a holy act.
‐ I need to fix this.
‐ He knew why roads really mattered.
‐ [Narrator] This is the untold story
of America’s road warriors.
‐ It wasn’t until you had a highway system
that Americans felt truly free.
(intense music)
(pensive music)
‐ [Narrator] In the aftermath of World War I,
United States automobile manufacturers
quickly switch from supporting the war effort
to once again producing cars.
‐ Car ownership quadruples from what it was before the war.
Households all over the country have cars now.
‐ [Narrator] 90% of roads are still just dirt,
and those that aren’t
are paved with a layer of loose rocks and gravel.
‐ Roads were filled with potholes,
they were filled with tree stumps,
mud during the wet seasons, dust during the dry seasons.
You needed a shovel, you needed a patch kit.
You would need all sorts of gear
to get you to and from your destination.
It was an adventure.
‐ [Narrator] While one road, the Lincoln Highway,
stretches across the United States,
most cities aren’t connected
and interstate travel must be done by ship or train.
‐ Farmers couldn’t get their produce to cities.
It cost more to ship over roads
a bushel of peaches just 20 miles away
than it did to ship them on the railroad 3,000 miles away.
‐ [Narrator] In 1916,
Congress passes the Federal Aid Highway Act,
which offers some of the first national funding for roads,
but it’s not nearly enough for suitable highways.
‐ There were no national roads.
Most roads were built by locals.
If you were a farmer
and your farm had frontage along a road,
you got out there once a year with a bunch of your employees
and you maintained that piece of road.
(pensive music)
‐ [Narrator] In Iowa, a local highway commissioner,
Thomas MacDonald, is thinking bigger.
‐ Thomas MacDonald grew up in Iowa.
‐ He witnessed as a boy
working in his father’s feed and lumber store
what farmers were experiencing,
their crops rotting before they could get to market.
‐ For Thomas MacDonald, building roads is really personal.
Farmers don’t have the luxury to sit around
and dream of an idea.
The actual have to turn their ideas into reality right away
or they don’t have a farm next year.
And I think Thomas MacDonald
took that attitude into his job.
‐ And he saw his road‐building crusade
as the only way to bring a better life to these people.
‐ [Narrator] But MacDonald doesn’t just want better roads.
He’s obsessed with roads that connect,
allowing people and products
to move anywhere in the country.
(suspenseful orchestral music)
And in 1919, MacDonald gets the chance to make his pitch
when he’s appointed chief
of the Federal Bureau of Public Roads.
‐ This country needs a highway system,
but we all know the states can’t afford to pay for it.
‐ Road‐building all throughout time,
whether it was the Roman Empire or whether it was Napoleon,
all those empires built from the top down.
You could only overcome local obstacles
if you have a strong federal force.
‐ The federal government needs to provide more funding.
50/50.
It’s an investment in the future growth
of the United States of America!
‐ Where do we begin?
(light rock music)
‐ [Narrator] MacDonald helps convince Congress
to pass the 1921 Federal Highway Act,
which dwarfs the 1916 act,
offering states nearly a billion dollars in today’s money.
The bill requires 60% of the funds
to be spent on interstate highways,
the first step toward achieving MacDonald’s vision
of a complete national grid.
Another new innovation:
the first standardized rules of the road.
(tires screeching)
(vehicles crunching)
‐ Road safety’s pretty much nonexistent.
A lot of accidents due to cross‐traffic.
A lot of rear‐enders that did not end happily back then.
That wasn’t an accident you necessarily walked away from.
‐ [Narrator] Cars kill over 20,000 Americans each year,
with more than a billion in property damage.
‐ They realized, "We need to have a unified standard
"for the color signs should be,
"how large the font should be, what shape should they be."
‐ [Narrator] One of the earliest stop signs
was diamond‐shaped, others circular, until 1922.
‐ If you can make all stop signs
the same number of sides, an octagon,
then at night you can see an octagon coming up
and you can know, "Okay, I need to slow down."
‐ Most stop signs were painted yellow
and then they came up with paint that would be reflective.
That’s when it became standard across the country
for everyone to use an octagonal red stop sign.
‐ [Narrator] Driving isn’t just unsafe,
(car horn honking) it’s also confusing.
‐ Roads were disconnected.
They were barely known about.
There weren’t any maps, really, to speak of.
There were no numbers telling you where to go.
‐ [Narrator] To sort out the chaos,
in 1926, MacDonald establishes the numbered highway system
to make cross‐country travel easier.
‐ They started on the East Coast, where most people lived.
North‐south highways are odd numbers
and east‐west highways are even.
And then the smaller numbers started in the Northeast
and worked their way out.
(light rock music)
‐ [Narrator] Roads also become
a huge source of employment in America.
For MacDonald, that’s a win.
‐ Now, this is a man who would roll into town
and be greeted like a king.
He’d be put up at the best hotels.
He’d be given food.
Everybody wanted his attention because they wanted roads.
(glasses clinking)
(soft electronic music)
‐ [Narrator] For the next few years,
progress is slow and steady.
Over 10,000 miles of highway are laid down,
but it’s still a far cry
from the interstate highway system MacDonald envisions.
‐ MacDonald isn’t satisfied.
He has yet to realize his goal of cities actually connected.
The big idea, the big picture, it has not yet come together.
‐ [Narrator] And by the end of the decade,
MacDonald faces a setback that could kill his plan for good.
(uneasy music)
‐ The stock market crash of 1929
not only results in the loss of jobs
for millions of Americans,
but it also shifts Americans’ economic priorities.
No longer are people interested
in mass‐produced modern conveniences.
There’s no money for that.
‐ [Narrator] With highway building grinding to a halt,
the dream MacDonald had spent a decade working on
looks to be over, unless he can get the attention
of the most powerful man in the world.
(dramatic music)
It’s now 1938, and President Franklin Delano Rooseveltnt
battles the Great Depression
with a series of sweeping governmental reforms
to get the economy moving again.
‐ FDR, coming into the White House
at the darkest days of the Depression,
saw the need for employment.
And there’s no better way to put people to work
than building a road.
So, the road‐building efforts
become this way to prime the pump for FDR.
‐ [Narrator] After over a decade of waiting,
MacDonald sees an opportunity to keep his grand plan alive.
‐ FDR and MacDonald both wanted
to link the country together with highways,
but they had very different ideas about how to do it.
FDR’s idea was to have three east‐west highways
and seven north‐south highways,
and they would all just be straight as a ruler.
MacDonald was looking for something much more dynamic.
‐ Mr. President,
I’ve been developing this for 20 years.
(soft curious music)
Imagine a highway system that goes beyond
a couple of transcontinental routes.
Imagine a system where every state has their own highway,
allowing us to drive anywhere and everywhere in America.
‐ There would be east‐west highways, north‐south highways,
but there would also be connecting roads and belt roads,
so you could get around the country
without ever leaving the interstate.
‐ [Narrator] Roosevelt approves $25 million
for a difficult first project
to prove MacDonald’s ideas can work:
building a 160‐mile stretch of highway
right through the Appalachian Mountains.
(soft tense music)
‐ Just getting from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg, 200 miles,
would take something like seven hours.
These mountains were very rugged, there were stoplights,
little two‐lane roads sometimes in bad condition.
This was not an easy drive.
‐ [Narrator] Dubbed the Pennsylvania Turnpike,
this modern road will connect Pittsburgh
to Harrisburg to Philadelphia.
If successful, it will be the first step
in making MacDonald’s 20‐year dream a reality.
‐ It was a difficult project to build,
but it was important to build
because Pennsylvania was the geographic connector
between the Midwest and the East.
‐ [Narrator] An even bigger challenge is the deadline.
Planners estimate a three‐to‐four‐year
construction period,
but Roosevelt wants it done in just 20 months.
‐ Roosevelt wanted it finished
in time for the 1940 presidential election
because he wanted to win Pennsylvania.
‐ Cove Mountain,
Tuscarora Mountain,
Scrub Ridge, Sideling Hill;
that’s a lotta mountains to build through, Tom.
‐ The world isn’t flat and straight,
but our roads have to be, right?
If you can’t do it, I’ll find someone who can.
Am I clear?
(confident rock music)
‐ These mountainous areas were difficult
to get materials to and from,
were difficult to chisel through,
to blast through. (explosion booming)
‐ [Narrator] Chiseling or blasting could take years.
But engineers come up with an innovative solution.
‐ The railroads left behind several tunnels
of a canceled rail line running through Pennsylvania.
Thomas MacDonald sees this and says,
"Wow, we can actually build a road on this thing.
"We could reuse these tunnels and save some time."
‐ [Narrator] It’s a lucky break.
But as crews work to widen and reinforce the tunnels,
their luck takes a turn.
(hammer pounding)
(ground rumbling) (man yelling)
(rising dramatic music)
(rock crashing)
(soft sullen music)
A 14‐ton rock falls from the ceiling of the tunnel,
killing four men.
‐ After seeing the dangers
of trying to tunnel through these mountains,
the issues with loss of life, the issues with worker safety,
they decided to change it to a cut,
and it was a major operation.
‐ [Narrator] But facing a 1,500‐foot hurdle
named Clear Ridge,
it will be the largest ever attempted on US soil.
‐ [Dan M.] They would cut through a rock ridge,
take that debris, and fill in a valley behind it.
And it was a constant ebb and flow
that the Pennsylvania Turnpike was starting to master.
‐ The Clear Ridge Cut is called Little Panama
after the Panama Canal,
the size and scope of how much this material
that needed to be gouged out of the mountain
for the road to go through.
‐ [Narrator] Over several weeks, crew remove enough earth
to fill more than two Rose Bowl stadiums,
creating a mile‐and‐a‐half‐long cut.
Once through the mountains,
highway paving units pump out 3.5 miles of concrete daily.
‐ They have 10,000 guys working on this road
around the clock to get it done.
‐ [Narrator] On October 1st, 1940,
one month before the election,
the turnpike opens and Roosevelt goes on to win
an unprecedented third term.
‐ The Pennsylvania Turnpike was a huge accomplishment
because the engineering was so challenging,
but also because they built it so fast.
It was possible to build thousands of miles of highway
around the country in a reasonable amount of time.
Under the interstate program,
all these highways would look essentially the same.
No grade would be more than 3%.
The turns were banked.
There were no railroad crosses
or road crosses or stoplights.
You could only enter the highway
on ramps through interchanges.
It’s a whole new concept in road design.
‐ [Man] What’s that?
‐ [Woman] Oh, that’s the entrance
to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Haven’t you ever been over it?
‐ [Man] No.
‐ Oh, it’s wonderful.
It’s a dream highway.
‐ The Pennsylvania Turnpike delivers itself in 1940
as a picture of people’s minds of what’s possible,
and the future is now.
The future is being built.
(light rock music)
‐ [Narrator] MacDonald’s next step
is building highways in Ohio and New York
that will connect to the turnpike in Pennsylvania.
But in 1941, another crisis upends the plan.
(dramatic music)
(airplane engines roaring)
The Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor
ushers in World War II.
And road‐building is about to become
a crucial player in the war effort.
‐ It’s a wake‐up call in that moment
that Americans have to take seriously
their ability to protect American cities,
to protect American citizens
by thinking about building an infrastructure
as a means of defense for the homeland.
(pensive music)
‐ [Narrator] MacDonald’s interstate system
is put aside in favor of a defense plan
and President Roosevelt stuns MacDonald with his next ask:
building the first highway to and from
the area of the country that’s most vulnerable to attack.
‐ Alaska?
(airplane engine roaring)
‐ [Narrator] With a bold sneak attack,
Japan has pulled America into World War II.
The US military fe
and the whole country through Alaska and needs a plan.
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ Today, you might think of Alaska
as this faraway corner of the continent.
But in strategic terms, in World War II,
it was a very important location.
‐ America is really ill‐prepared
to defend the Alaskan mainland
because there’s still no road to Alaska.
The only way to back up the military there
would be by ship or by plane.
The Alaskan highway is critically important
to America’s interests during World War II.
‐ [Narrator] It falls on Thomas MacDonald
to recruit the right person for the job.
‐ Frank Turner was raised in Texas.
His father worked for the railroad.
They were absolutely dirt poor.
Didn’t have running water, no electricity.
Frank got himself to college and became a civil engineer
and worked his way up.
‐ [Rob] He can find efficiencies to actually get roads built
under budget, on time.
And Thomas MacDonald sees this and says, "That’s my guy."
‐ [Narrator] Just 90 days after Pearl Harbor, work begins.
The route from Canada to Fairbanks is 1,700 miles long
and must be finished in just eight months.
That’s more than 10 times
the length of the Pennsylvania Turnpike
in less than half the time.
(tense music)
‐ You’re talking about building a road
that’s about the distance of Washington DC to Denver,
except that you’re building it
through rugged Alaskan terrain
that’s frozen most of the year.
‐ [Narrator] Work crews labor away
in temperatures as cold as 70 below zero,
working in places with names like Suicide Hill,
(ominous music)
where 32 soldiers are killed
after their transport truck overturns.
‐ Road‐builders on this Alaskan project
were faced with extreme conditions,
freezing, thawing, cold, mud,
lack of supplies, lack of materials, lack of shelter even.
‐ The farther you go into the wilderness,
the tougher it is to get supplies
to that leading edge of your construction.
‐ [Narrator] With supplies dwindling,
it goes from bad to worse.
Three months into the project,
the US military meets its worst fear.
(suspenseful music)
‐ Early in the war,
two island in the Aleutian chain were invaded by Japan.
‐ [Narrator] 500 Japanese special forces
quickly establish seaplane and submarine bases
on two Aleutian islands off the coast of Alaska.
It’s the first time since the War of 1812
US soil has been occupied by a foreign power.
(weapons firing)
‐ And so, there’s a race to make sure
that America can defend that region.
‐ [Narrator] In a matter of months,
the number of Japanese troops grows to 5,000
and Turner is feeling the pressure.
‐ It’s possible the Japanese could mount an invasion
of the American West Coast
and potentially the entire continent.
‐ [Narrator] Turner is given 10,000 men,
who work on the highway almost 24/7 to finish before winter.
‐ He could only build a few months outta the year,
so they had pressure to build for national security.
They also had all the challenges
of building in the wilderness of Alaska.
‐ [Narrator] Despite brutal conditions,
the 1,700‐mile highway is finished in November.
Turner makes the eight‐month deadline.
And with this new military pipeline,
the Japanese are driven from the Aleutians.
‐ Frank Turner’s career‐defining moment
was the Alaskan project.
‐ [Narrator] At $138 million,
it’s nearly two‐and‐a‐half times
the cost of the Pennsylvania Turnpike
and the most expensive US construction project
of World War II.
But the importance of highways to the war effort
isn’t limited to the homeland.
(soft brooding music)
In Europe, Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower
is also seeing firsthand the value of better roads.
‐ The German autobahn is far and away
better than highway system in the United States.
‐ [Narrator] Known as "Hitler’s Highway,"
Germany used it to wage blitzkrieg attacks
on its European neighbors.
‐ Eisenhower was possibly the greatest logistics genius
in military history, so he knew why roads really mattered.
‐ [Narrator] And never is it more on display
than after D‐Day during the Battle for Europe.
‐ Eisenhower took roads and made them one‐way,
two lanes, one direction, towards Germany.
They were fighting on the east,
Eisenhower’s coming in from the west,
and he gets across the Rhine, gets onto an autobahn,
and he gets ahead of the retreating Germans
on their own road system.
(soft electronic music)
It was the autobahn that cemented it for him
that we would need broader ribbons across the land.
We would need an autobahn back in the United States.
(crowds cheering)
‐ [Narrator] By 1945, the war is over.
(reverent orchestral music)
And the US will emerge as a superpower.
Dwight D. Eisenhower serves as Army Chief of Staff
under Truman, then the first Supreme Commander of NATO.
And on November 4th, 1952,
he wins the presidential election in a landslide.
‐ Eisenhower enters the White House
in a moment of consensus.
You see that in the slogan, "We like Ike."
He’s a popular president who’s coming in
in a moment of enormous economic prosperity
for the United States.
Americans have this opportunity
to purchase homes in suburbia,
to drive automobiles of every color.
And so it becomes a priority
of the Eisenhower Administration to help facilitate that
by dealing with the problem of America’s roads.
‐ In 1945,
there were about 25 million registered cars.
By 1953, that number almost doubles to 46 million,
but only half of the roads were paved.
This doesn’t work. (car horn honking)
‐ [Narrator] With President Eisenhower
making highways a new priority,
Thomas MacDonald is primed
to finally fulfill his interstate dream.
(phone ringing)
‐ Secretary Weeks.
(rising ominous music)
‐ Eisenhower decided that he wanted
a different head of the Bureau of Public Roads.
(pensive music)
‐ The roads America needed, well, that was changing.
Sometimes you need a fresh set of eyes
to look at the problem.
‐ [Narrator] Eisenhower’s new highway boss,
(phone ringing) MacDonald’s old protege,
Frank Turner.
‐ Hello?
‐ It’s almost like Frank Turner got a battlefield promotion.
This engineering accomplishment
is going to need a brilliant mind,
and Frank Turner is that person.
‐ Finish this for me.
(tense music)
‐ [Narrator] By 1956,
Frank Turner is a year into his new job
as the head of the Bureau of Public Roads,
and he’s pushing for an interstate highway system
that runs through every major city in America.
‐ Frank Turner was concerned.
What he saw in the 19th century with railroads
is railroads would skip a town and then that town would die.
‐ We were gonna run the superhighway
right into the city.
‐ [Narrator] But Congress is balking
at the $2.4‐trillion price tag,
(uneasy music)
so he needs a way to prove the economic benefits
and creates a written sales pitch
for over 100 cities in 41 states.
It’s dubbed the "yellow book."
‐ The "yellow book" comes out
showing each major city in the United States
that would be receiving an interstate system,
and it was a way to get mayors, congressmen,
people in the cities excited about the interstate system.
(soft electronic music)
‐ It’s not just an engineering plan, it’s a business plan.
And it’s to show how each one of those people’s
needs and desires are going to be fulfilled
enough so that they’ll buy into the project.
‐ [Narrator] The "yellow book" is a game‐changer.
Turner’s bill passes.
And in June, Eisenhower signs
the Federal Highway Act of 1956.
‐ The 1956 interstate highway bill
is by far the largest the country had ever seen.
We’re talking about over $100 million per year in perpetuity
until the project’s finished.
(phone ringing)
‐ Hello?
‐ [Tom] I’m proud of you, Frank.
‐ Well...
None of this would’ve happened without you, Tom.
‐ I think that Thomas MacDonald saw Frank Turner
as a younger version of himself,
a true believer in road‐building.
‐ He saw road‐building as a holy act.
‐ [Narrator] And Turner will stop at nothing
to achieve his vision.
‐ He came to visit his parents in their house in Texas.
The house fell right in the path of a highway
that Frank Turner was to build.
His mother came out and said,
"Frank, isn’t there something you can do?"
He said, "There is, but I won’t.
"You’ll have to move."
(light rock music)
‐ [Narrator] Nearly 30 years
since MacDonald first conceived it,
the interstate as we know it is finally on its way.
The new bill will create a network
of 40,000 miles of multilane divided highways,
and every American city with a population
of more than 50,000 will be linked.
The steel required for the interstate system
is enough to build 500 aircraft carriers.
The pavement alone could cover
three round‐trips to the moon.
Congress wants the massive system
finished in only 12 years,
and they’re betting on a revolutionary new way
of funding it.
(soft electronic music) ‐ The way it was financed,
there wasn’t an overall budget initially.
It was financed with gas taxes.
It was a pay‐as‐you‐go program,
so you’d wind up with a certain amount of income
into the highway trust fund each year
that you could draw from and you couldn’t draw more.
‐ [Narrator] Within a year, Turner begins construction
on a crucial remaining piece of his interstate plan:
four coast‐to‐coast highways,
including a 2,500‐mile southern route
to replace the iconic Route 66.
Named Interstate 40, it begins in Oklahoma
before spreading out to Raleigh in the east
and Barstow to the west.
But after six years of construction,
it hits a major obstacle.
(wind whistling)
(low menacing music)
‐ Cutting west‐southwest,
we could make a clear path to here.
But...
How do we get through that?
‐ We could nuke it?
(wind whistling)
‐ There’s a program called Operation Plowshares,
which is designed to find civilian uses
for nuclear detonations. (explosion booming)
"Hey, if we wanna literally eradicate a mountain
"to build a dam or to put a highway through,
"why not use controlled nuclear blasts?"
(edgy rock music)
(pensive music)
‐ [Narrator] In California’s Mojave Desert,
Frank Tu
He’s halfway through Congress’s deadline
to finish the entire 40,000‐mile interstate system
within 12 years.
But standing in his way,
the 3,800‐foot Bristol Mountain range.
‐ We could nuke it?
(wind whistling)
(Frank chuckling)
‐ I’m not sure Congress
will go for dropping a bomb on a mountain.
They just passed a test ban treaty with the Soviets.
But it would get the job done.
‐ There were a lotta people who were involved
in the development of nuclear weapons
who really wanted to prove that nuclear weapons
could have a positive, peaceful application.
‐ [Narrator] With the press of a button,
Turner could vaporize 68 million cubic yards of mountain,
creating a 15‐mile shortcut in the roadway
and reducing building costs by 36%.
‐ They had actually designed the reviewing stand
where the dignitaries could watch the explosions!
Fortunately, thank god,
somebody from the Agricultural Department got ahold of this
and said, "Do you realize that it will obliterate
"crop production for probably 10 years?!"
‐ [Narrator] In total, the US government spends
almost $800 million studying nuclear weapons
for civil engineering.
Along with highways, they consider nukes
to widen the Panama Canal and build a harbor in Alaska.
All are eventually scrapped.
Without nukes, Turner settles for a longer route
around the mountains to complete I‐40.
But 600 miles to the northeast,
he encounters a range far too big to bypass.
‐ [Narrator] These mountain ranges
form an almost unbroken chain
along the whole west
coast of North America.
‐ [Narrator] The Rocky Mountains.
‐ You gotta go through a section of the Rockies
which is basically part of the Continental Divide.
And so, the Continental Divide
is essentially this giant ridge that goes
all the way from the top of North America and Alaska
all the way down through South America.
Think of it maybe like the forehead of a Klingon.
(low brooding music)
‐ The original map of the interstate system
showed I‐70 ending in Denver.
Then the federal government
showed the design to the military
and the military said,
"Ah, but if you route the highway down south,
"it cuts 200 miles off between Denver and Los Angeles,"
a strategic route that just was too delicious
not to wanna have.
(equipment rumbling)
‐ [Narrator] At an altitude of 11,000 feet,
crews start work on the highest highway tunnel in the world,
attempting to burrow through 1.7 miles
of granite, talc, and clay.
‐ The rock they were drilling through wasn’t very good rock.
It was loose, there were faults.
It could easily cave in.
‐ When the type of rock condition changes abruptly,
it can cause instability.
It can cause collapse, which can lead to loss of life.
(equipment rumbling)
‐ Let me see those accident reports.
Landslide.
Avalanche.
Two fires.
Cave‐in? (rising pensive music)
We should be protecting our men, not putting them in danger.
I need to fix this.
‐ [Narrator] With only a year left
to finish the entire highway system,
Turner and his top engineers
quickly innovate a unique solution.
‐ [James] They had to design a special machine
that would hold up the roof of the tunnel.
It was called The Shield.
‐ It’s almost five stories tall when it’s constructed.
It’s very expensive, over a million dollars.
It’s the Hail Mary pass that’s gonna get the engineers
from one side of the mountain to the other.
(soft plodding music)
(equipment rumbling)
‐ [Narrator] In September of 1969,
the fate of I‐70 and Frank Turner’s career
rests on the success of The Shield.
(equipment groaning)
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ What happened?
‐ It’s stuck.
‐ [Narrator] By the late‐’60s, only 25,000 mileses
of the proposed 40,000‐mile interstate s
have been built,
and chief engineer Frank Turner’s highway budget
is now almost twice his 1956 estimate.
Despite being over budget and behind schedule,
some cities are seeing significant growth.
‐ Places that were towns,
like Albuquerque, Dallas, Phoenix,
they are now able to become these massive metropolises
surrounded by these interconnected suburbs
that can be traversed in a matter of hours or even minutes.
(soft electronic music)
‐ [Narrator] Between 1950 and 1970,
Denver has doubled its population, Houston has tripled,
and Phoenix is 10 times its size.
‐ Places like Arizona and New Mexico
that had been pretty off the beaten track
before interstates, became popular destinations.
In fact, in the 1960s,
the number of people visiting the Grand Canyon doubled.
‐ This changes the way we eat; fast‐food chains pop up.
This changes the way we stay; hotel chains pop up.
‐ The interstate changed
the economic geography of the country.
And one of the first businesses
to really pick up on this was McDonald’s.
Instead of putting their restaurants
in the middle of the downtown areas,
they would locate them by the highway off‐ramps.
‐ [Narrator] While cities east of the Rockies
are enjoying the benefits of the new interstate highways,
Frank Turner is on a deadline
to connect them to the West Coast.
(low brooding music)
He’s made a big bet on a $7‐million drill
named The Shield
to finally get I‐70 through the mountains.
‐ Only 70 feet in, it gets stuck.
It’s just incapable of getting through
this massive mountain.
‐ [Narrator] The weight of the mountain above is too much.
If Turner wants his direct route through the Rockies,
he’s got to find a way to keep it from collapsing.
(soft mysterious music)
‐ There is no other way.
We have to go through the mountain.
So...
Now...
We try...
The multiple drift technique.
‐ The multiple drift technique
is where you have a main tunnel
and, around that main tunnel,
smaller drift holes are drilled
and then filled with concrete
to beef up the surrounding rock.
So, the probability of cave‐ins was reduced
because these multiple drifts that surround the main tunnel
create a protective layer.
(rising suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] Using the multiple drift technique,
crews successfully tunnel a two‐mile highway
through the Rockies.
Dubbed the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel,
when it opens in 1973, it’s the highest tunnel in the world.
‐ Now, suddenly, the western side of the United States
is open as well because this path
from Denver through the Rocky Mountains
opens up all sorts of development.
Think of tourism, think of skiing.
‐ [Narrator] After this accomplishment, Turner retires,
but work on the interstate carries on.
Congress continues to spend highway dollars,
but the economic boom isn’t enjoyed
by all communities equally.
‐ The story of the highway system is complicated.
It was something we needed to do as a country,
but also it was done on terms that excluded a lotta people.
‐ Much of the interstate infrastructure
in the United States where it passes through cities
is gonna be built over the heads
and through the houses of African American
and other low‐income residents.
And those Americans ultimate see
communities that had been hard won
and built out of decades of migration, turmoil, and struggle
erased overnight in the name of progress and planning.
‐ So, we look back now on a mixed legacy.
But there is no question
that America would not have developed
into the world‐leading economy we are today
if we hadn’t made that choice to invest in a highway system.
‐ [Narrator] Finally completed in 1995,
almost 30 years late and $100 billion over budget,
the Interstate Highway System
gives Americans more choices on where and how to live.
‐ It brings together what had been small pathways,
trails, smaller roadways
into a standardized system of signage and construction
from coast to coast.
We’re talking about 47,000 miles of highway,
55,000 bridges.
‐ [Narrator] While this engineering marvel
bears Eisenhower’s name,
there are other lesser‐known figures
perhaps more deserving of such recognition.
‐ Americans think that they remember
that Eisenhower’s the one that came up with this idea,
and nothing could be further from the truth.
‐ The story of American highways
is a story of disciplined bureaucrats, really,
who thought big,
not because they were getting rich
or that their names were going on it.
Men like MacDonald, Turner,
they were really committed to the idea
of improving transportation
as the key to improving the lives of Americans.
(rising reverent orchestral music)
‐ Someday thousands of years from now,
archeologists are gonna look back
on the America of the 20th century.
And even though the pavement may be long gone,
the Interstate Highway System
will be there forever!