Interstate 80

Interstate 80. Millions see and drive on it every day, but did you know it is one of the heavy lifters of the US Interstate System? It also parallels the routes of the earliest cross-country road trips (mostly) as well as the first transcontinental railroad. Before we depart on our armchair roadtrip, we'll talk about how the interstate highway system came to be and about Interstate 80 in particular. 

Transcript

0:14

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Nifty 50 Show. Sorry it's been a while, but I have been thinking about how to do this next set of episodes and thought I would do it a little differently than just having random stories in places all over the United States and that I would change it into a armchair road trip. So. This one will be a little bit different in the fact that rather than, as I mentioned, doing disparate stories over the entire country, we're going to follow Interstate 80 from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, as if we were driving it. Interstate 80 is one of the few interstates that I have driven completely. I also think it is one of the prettiest? I guess I'm biased because I've driven it a lot to go to school from Utah to Ohio, but I think it, it's really kind of the interstate backbone to our country if you will. Before we get into all of Interstate 80, I just want to talk about road trips in general and the interstate system, because they are a huge part of American culture. I guess one of the famous jokes is if you ask a Midwesterner if they want to fly to Florida, why would they fly when they can just drive the 14 hours? I don't know if that's entirely true for everybody, but. Driving, then you don't have to rent a car, you already have a car. And there's a lot of fun stuff to see along the way. But we have not always been a nation of roads. In fact roads were generally poor in condition before cars And travelling by foot or by carriage was often very dangerous. And slow. Very, very slow. Which is why, railroads, but then before that, rivers and canals, because a boat is a lot easier to use as a mode of transportation than trying to hack your way through a forest or over a mountain. A river's already done that for you. So. Where do we begin? June 29th, 1956 is the day that the interstate highway system was officially formed. This is not the day it opened, but rather this is the day that Congress passed the law that created the funding for the entire interstate highway system. And there are three main reasons why. They decided to do this. One is the need to move goods and people quickly. And this is obviously related to the military. The United States had just come out of World War II along with the rest of the world. And they had found a need to move large shipments very quickly and very easily over a vast amount of space. Planes were still very expensive. Railways could get pricey and you still have to make the railroad, but put it in a truck and that truck doesn't necessarily need to stay on a single track. So. Interstate highways. Also, the president at the time was Dwight Eisenhower, and he had been influenced by his time in Europe during World War II, and in particular in watching the German autobahn. And he was very impressed with this system of roads that enabled Germans and the German military to move around so quickly and move throughout Germany efficiently. And then the third reason, which is perhaps the least talked about, is Eisenhower's own road trip experience. Eisenhower was not new to road trips. He was not new to the idea of needing to cross a large amount of land very quickly and efficiently. And he knew that roads could solve a lot of logistical problems for the military and society in general. The year was 1919. Eisenhower was a young lieutenant colonel from Camp Meade in Maryland. He was newly married, and obviously this is right after World War I, so patriotism is kind of at a peak right before we get into the Roaring Twenties. And the country's just flush with, I guess, a general excitement. There's peace in Europe. The world was extremely connected by then, and of course there were all these new technologies and cars in particular. The army recognized that the car had a lot of potential value, and so to that effect, they decided to do a cross country trip. Eisenhower volunteered for this coast to coast military convoy, which would start in Maryland and end in San Francisco, California. Eisenhower said in his journals of this trip, he said, quote, To those who have known only concrete and macadam highways of gentle grades and engineered curbs, such a trip might seem humdrum. In those days, we were not sure it could be accomplished at all. Nothing of the sort had ever been attempted. Which, This is true in a sense of a military convoy, but it was not the first time someone had attempted to cross the country by car. The first person to actually complete a cross country drive was a man by the name of Horatio Nelson Jackson. In 1903. He and his wife had been vacationing in San Francisco, and they had gone out and driving lessons and thought this is pretty fun. Now she was much more sensible than he was and he said that he could drive across the country and he bet 50 on that, which today would be about 1, 700. I mean, at the time, I guess it would have been a lot of money, but today For 1, 700 to do what he's about to do would be pretty much impossible, um, mostly because you'd spend way more than 1, 700, but he bet 50 that he could drive across the country. He was 31 years old. He had no car. He had no experience driving, except for that driving lesson they had just taken, and perhaps more importantly, they had no maps. This was way before the time when people needed maps. An entire atlas of a country and see how they could get from one side to the other. I mean, why would you worry about that when you're sitting on a train? The train's gonna take you, you don't have to worry about it. And the train is gonna take you through some extremely inhospitable land that we will talk about later throughout this podcast. While his wife returned home to Vermont by train, he bought the car in California. He did convince a mechanic to join him, which was very wise on his part because he would need him. And then the two of them decided to set off for New York City. They left San Francisco on May 23rd and arrived in New York City on July 26th. So that is two months and three days. Sounds like a long journey, but most of it was actually spent west of the Missouri River. For the first part, they drove up into northern California and up into Oregon to follow the Oregon Trail, because this trail would avoid high passes and the big deserts of Nevada and western Utah. However, it did mean that they had to take a fairly large detour. Today, we'd just blow through on I 80, but they went up through Oregon, and then into Idaho, where they did get a dog as a companion, and then they continued into Wyoming. They got lost in Wyoming for two days, which sounds like hell on earth to me. You will hear about this when we cross the border into Wyoming in our armchair road trip, but out of 50 states, there has to be number 50. The best one is Ohio, which make fun of me all you want, but I stand by it. Clearly, the last one would be Wyoming. I dislike Wyoming immensely, and it's probably irrational, but once again I'm sticking with it. So they got lost in Wyoming for two whole days, which would be kind of the consequence if you didn't have very good maps. They then arrived in Omaha July 12th after crossing Nebraska. So imagine you've now spent a month and a half trying to get through California, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Which, when you look at a map, that is roughly half the country, but then it took them two weeks to drive from Omaha to New York City. Which then just puts into perspective how different the road systems were, obviously out west it's a lot more rugged, the land changes very quickly, and it gets quite mountainous very fast, which is why the railroad works so well, because you just blast rock out of the way and put it lay a track. However out east where it's far more farmland, fertile, flat, and riverine, and yes the Appalachians, you can have a somewhat decent road system. Cars were still very new but they did have a somewhat decent way to get from Omaha to New York in two weeks. This is 64 days, most of which is spent in the west trying to get out of who knows what. I mean, they got lost, they got a dog. There were multiple times that they had to go back. They'd have to leave the car in the middle of nowhere and walk back to the nearest town to then probably telephone or send a telegram for replacement parts most towns didn't have a mechanic shop so the mechanic had to do all the work but that meant they also had to sit around waiting for the replacement parts to be shipped by rail to whoever they were so this the story was more for sensationalism rather than practicality everybody thought it was just a really great fun bet a really great story he was kind of a pioneer and adventurer in the tradition of the car, but people really didn't see the need to be able to drive cross country still. That changes 16 years later because of Eisenhower and this military convoy. The military and the government knew that they needed a way to cross the country quickly. However, this convoy, which was in turn sponsored by automakers, gasoline companies, tire manufacturers, and all sorts of other car related companies, to highlight the sorry state of American roads, it still ended up taking 62 days. This is two days shorter, and 16 years later, nothing had really changed. They ran into ditches, quicksand, mud, and of course, the desert. And they would claim that all of this conspired against them every single day. Their top speed was 10 miles an hour. which drive through your own neighborhood at 10 miles an hour and see how frustrated you get, how fast you get frustrated too, and imagine driving that speed across the entire country from Maryland to San Francisco, California. This obviously had its intended effect and in 1926 the federal government created the U. S. numbered highway system, which are the black and white shields. And they are, in large part, still around today. You can see many of them. Most interstates did replace some portion of that system. But these roads also still exist outside. I live near US 89. And that still goes north south. U. S. 90 is also one in the south. So these roads still exist, but even though the federal government created the system and numbered all these beautiful highways on a map, they still lacked a lot of the smoothness, I guess, that we expect when driving on a major road. Some of the roads were very crappy, and a lot of these roads are in the middle of nowhere, No real reason to take care of them if no one's driving on them, and that is the state of affairs. After that, roads would be continually improved, but there was no efficient way. Granted, railroads were still important up until the interstate system, which probably correlated, but also airplanes were becoming more and more useful and cheaper and safer. The one problem with the U. S. highway system is that it was maintained by state or local governments. Now there are a lot of complicated relationships involved with the interstate system and how it's funded and maintained, but imagine that the federal government's like, we've made this system, but then you have to take care of it. That also contributed to the varied state that drivers would encounter throughout their journey. With the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, the federal government said that they would pay for 90 percent of the cost of construction, which is huge. Obviously the system would have a set standard and the standard would largely be met because there was one overseer, the federal government, and these standards are still in effect today. You can download the book actually from the federal agency in charge and it's really, it sounds really geeky, but it's really interesting to read that The barriers in the middle have to have a certain height, the medians have to reach a certain width, and despite this you may have driven on a road such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike or the Kansas Turnpike that differ and this was because they were adopted into the interstate system rather than made under the same standards. So there are some differences on some older roads but largely throughout the entire country when you get on an interstate you know how exactly it's going to look. And that's because the federal government decided to pay for 90 percent of it, and had a set standard. So, Interstate 80, Interstate 80 runs 2, 900. 76 miles from San Francisco, California to Teaneck, New Jersey, which is just outside of New York. Can see the GW from Teaneck. So it was started in 1956 along with most of the major interstate highways and completed 30 years later in 1986. It is the second longest interstate highway after I 90, which runs from Seattle and then crossed down around the Great Lakes and up into Boston, Massachusetts. And as I mentioned earlier, most interstates did parallel a previously constructed road. with the exception of one section of Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania. And Interstate 80 paralleled the historic Lincoln Highway, also U. S. 30. in many places. And the Lincoln Highway was one of the first transcontinental highways in the U. S. and a road specifically designed for automobiles. It was created by an Indiana engineer named Carl Fisher and it ran from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco and it was named for Abraham Lincoln. This road you will see signs all over it on Interstate 80. The maximum elevation is 8, 640 feet in Wyoming at Sherman Summit. Which is pretty tall. I 80 also hosts the longest gap between exits on an interstate highway at 37. 4 miles in western Utah. Which I do have a very great story about getting stuck in that long gap. As I mentioned, the Pennsylvania section was entirely new because it runs through part of the state that wasn't as populated as other places. It largely avoided the previously constructed roads. And so they built it entirely from scratch. The last section of the interstate was finished in Utah between the airport and Redwood Road just west of Salt Lake City. And as I mentioned, this was 1986. Which, as someone born in 1994, that is crazy. Because my parents would have already been living down here in Davis County and would have probably driven that. And then they would have been here for when that opened. Which I'm not saying my parents are old. I'm just saying, wow, the interstate's young. Nebraska is home to the largest section of the interstate at 455 miles, which many people fill and then complain about, which is kind of sad. Nebraska is one of my favorite states as well. Nevada is second at 410 miles, Wyoming at third with 402 miles. Now despite being the longest section in a state, Nebraska was the first state with Interstate 80 running through it. to finish its section. And this was also true just in general of the entire interstate system. Nebraska has one interstate, a few auxiliaries, but one primary interstate, and that's interstate 80. So of course they were finished first. Good for Nebraska. And supposedly, I don't know how you judge this, but they must have because it's advertised everywhere, the world's largest truck stop is located in Iowa. So that will be an exciting thing to look forward to. And interstate 80 also passes through more state capitals than any interstate. And this will include auxiliaries. So for example, Sacramento, Salt Lake and Cheyenne all sit directly on the interstate, but Carson city will sit on interstate 580 and is about 30 miles South of the primary interstate. But that is basically the overview for interstate 80 and the interstate highway system There's lots of other nuances, but we'll get into that as we drive along through the country on this armchair road trip So pack your bags Get ready, and we're going to fly to San Francisco to start this fun journey. We'll do it in 12 sections. We're not doing it the fastest This isn't trying to be like how fast can we drive across the country because that would not be as fun we're not trying to be speed demons and blow through the The country as fast as we can, but rather take a more leisurely pace and stop and see some of the interesting places that the interstate passes through. And by and actually learn more about the history of our country so, buckle up, get ready,