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The Pershing Map FDR's hand-drawn map from 1938. The United States government's efforts to construct a national network of highways began on an ad hoc basis with the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, which provided $75 million over a five-year period for matching funds to the states for the construction and improvement of highways. [8]
The Inter-American Highway (IAH) is the Central American section of the Pan-American Highway and spans 5,470 kilometers (3,400 mi) between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and Panama City, Panama. History [ edit ]
1946 map of the Pan-American Highway (outside the United States) The concept of an overland route from one tip of the Americas to the other was originally proposed as a railroad. In 1884 the U.S. Congress passed a law with a plan to build an inter-American rail system. [3]
A map of the Strategic Highway Network, one component of the NHS Map of average freight truck traffic on the NHS in 2015. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the 160,000-mile (260,000 km) National Highway System includes roads important to the United States' economy, defense, and mobility, from one or more of the following road networks (specific routes may be part of more than ...
The Pershing Map was an early blueprint for a national highway system in the United States, with many of the proposed roads later forming a substantial portion of the Interstate Highway System. [1] It's the first official United States road map, and many of the proposed roadways were later incorporated into the current highway system.
In 1925, the Joint Board on Interstate Highways, recommended by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), worked to form a national numbering system to rationalize the roads. After several meetings, a final report was approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in November 1925.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw highways as both essential to national defense and the economy, as well as a means of putting unemployed people to work. On April 14, 1941, Roosevelt appointed a National Interregional Highway Committee to study the need for a limited system of national inter-state highways. [1]
With an original authorization of $25 billion (equivalent to $215 billion in 2023) [1] for the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System over a 10-year period, it was the largest public works project in American history through that time. [2]