The Big Roads   by Earl Swift

The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionariesand Trailblazers who Created the American SuperHighways

American Road    by Pete Davies

The Story of an Epic Transcontinental Journey of the Dawn of the Motor Age

        These two books tell the opposite ends of the changing of the United States by the devopment of the highway systems. 

     AMERICAN ROAD tells the story of the first automobile transcontinental caravan.  Leaving from the White House to the finish in San Francisco, it follows 3,251 miles of single lane basic tarmac, dirt tracts, and washed out stretches. The journey was sponsored and managed by the U.S. Army. It's purpose was  "To demonstrate the practicability of long distance motor commercial transportation and the consequent necessary expenditure of government appropriations to provide necessary highways". The convoy consisted of eighty one vehicles, carrying 37 officers and 258 enlisted men. Among the officers was a 28 year old captain named Dwight Eisenhower, traveling as an observer. The journey took over two months.
     The book is entertaining, informative and a fairly easy read.  Consisting of 231 pages, plus notes, it does not go off on too many tangents mainly telling the actual story of the adventure. It does, however, lay the groundwork for Eisenhower's insistance on finding the funding of the Interstate system 35 years later.

     THE BIG ROADS tells the story of the design, building, problems solved and the problems caused by the Interstate Highway System.  The actual design of the routes for the system had been completed by 1938.  By the Truman Administration, tests an surfaces and signage had begun.  Eisenhower gets the credit ( the official name is "The Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways") because he rammed most of the funding through congress.  This book does a nice job of telling the problems of building such a vast web of highways from layout to construction to funding. While the engineers that came up with the design are lauded, the side effects created are not ignored.  Many small towns withered away because of being bypassed.  A good portion of the book is related to the destruction of neighborhoods in cities ravaged by the cement ribbons tearing through them.  This is a well balanced telling of the way America was totally changed by the Auto and roads to support them.  A little harder to go through, this book is worth the effort.

Vegas Bill