-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 22
Feb 1955
(source)
“More than any single action by the government since the end
of the war, this one would change the face of America with
straightaways, cloverleaf turns, bridges, and elongated
parkways. Its impact on the American economy—the
jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural
areas it would open up—was beyond calculation.”
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mandate for Change
1953-1956 (1963)
(source)
“The Interstate Highway System wound a key and then released
a perpetual motion machine.”
-- Janet F. Davidson and
Michael S. Sweeney
On the
Move: Transportation and the American Story,
2003 Smithsonian Institution & National Geographic Society
(source)
“President Eisenhower … gave the nation its
biggest construction project, the huge interstate-highway program that
changed the shape of American society and made possible the expansion
of the suburban middle class.”
-- James M. Perry
The Wall Street Journal,
27 Oct 1995
(source)
“The Interstate Highway Act literally brought Americans
closer together. We were connected city-to-city,
town-to-town, family-to-family, as we had never been before.
That law did more to bring Americans together than any other law this
century . . . ”
-- President Bill Clinton, 8
Feb 1996
(source)
“The Interstate System works; in fact, it has exceeded its
original scope and mission by revolutionizing the nation's logistics,
changing the way we travel, and knitting the country's regions closer
together. Thanks to constant redesign and reconstruction, the
Interstate remains a vital part of the U.S. economy.”
-- Daniel J. McConville
American Heritage of
Invention and Technology, Fall 1995
(source)
“Dwight D. Eisenhower changed America forever with the
creation of the interstate highway program.”
-- Joel Garreau, Edge City, 1991
(source)
“Congestion and repairs aside, the Interstates have knit us
together in subtle and unanticipated ways. Just as the
railroad first introduced us to the country a century ago, so the
Interstates have opened it up to everyone. Their very
popularity has confirmed our love of the road, which is really a love
of exploration. We are still pioneers, seeking new horizons
from the driver's seat.”
-- Nick Taylor
Travel Holiday,
August 1990
(source)
“Along with the GI Bill, which educated and housed
Eisenhower's fellow veterans, the Interstate System has proved to be by
far the most important economic-development strategy of the federal
government.”
-- David S. Broder
The Washington Post,
10 Oct 1990
(source)
“The Interstate program was the last New Deal Program and the
first space program, combining the economic and social ambitions of the
former with the technological and organizational virtuosity, the sense
of national prestige and achievement, of the latter.”
-- Phil Patton
Open Road: A Celebration
of the American Highway, 1986
(source)
“Archeologists of some future age will study [the freeway] .
. . to understand who we were.”
-- David Brodsly
L. A. Freeway: An
Appreciative Essay, 1981
(source)
“The Interstate System is the most grandiose and indelible
signature that Americans have ever scratched across the face of their
land.”
-- "The 100 Events That Shaped
America"
Life, Bicentennial
Issue, 1976
(source)
