The story of America's first government-sponsored highway The National Road was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, this 620-mile road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was the main avenue to the West. Roger Pickenpaugh's comprehensive account is based on detailed archival research into documents that few scholars have examined, including sources from the National Archives, and details the promotion, construction, and use of this crucially important thoroughfare. America's First Interstate looks at the road from the perspective of westward expansion, stagecoach travel, freight hauling, livestock herding, and politics of construction as the project goes through changing presidential administrations. Pickenpaugh also describes how states assumed control of the road once the US government chose to abandon it, including the charging of tolls. His data-mining approach--revealing technical details, contracting procedures, lawsuits, charges and countercharges, local accounts of travel, and services along the road--provides a wealth of information for scholars to more critically consider the cultural and historical context of the Road's construction and use. While most of America's First Interstate covers the early days during the era of stagecoach and wagon traffic, the story continues to the decline of the road as railroads became prominent, its rebirth as US Route 40 during the automobile age, and its status in the present day.

The year 2006 celebrates the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Interstate System, the most incredible road system in the world. Created by Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose WW II experiences taught him the necessity of a superhighway for military transport and evacuation in wartime, today's Interstate System is what connects our coasts and our borders, our cities and small towns. It's made possible our suburban lifestyle and caused the vast proliferation of businesses from HoJos to Holiday Inns. And if you order something online, most likely it's a truck barreling along an interstate that gets the product to your door. Written by bestselling author Dan McNichol, The Roads that Built America is the fascinating story of the largest engineering project the world has ever known.

In Divided Highways, Tom Lewis tells the monumental story of the largest engineered structure ever built: the Interstate Highway System. Here is one of the great untold tales of American enterprise, recounted entirely through the stories of the human beings who thought up, mapped out, poured, paved - and tried to stop - the Interstates. Conceived and spearheaded by Thomas "the Chief" MacDonald, the iron-willed bureaucrat from the muddy farmlands of Iowa who rose to unrivaled power, the highway system was propelled forward through the pathbreaking efforts of brilliant engineers, argued over by politicians of every ideological and moral stripe, reviled by the citizens whose lives it devastated, and lauded as the greatest public works project in U.S. history.

Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them—the highway killer. He went by many names: the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation, and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell.

This companion volume to The National Road is a traveler's guide to the nation's first federally funded highway. Combining a wealth of historical and geographical information, this book takes readers on a 700-mile journey through America's heartland, from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mississippi River. Illustrated with more than 300 maps and lithographs, this authoritative gudie leads us down a trail into our nation's past.

From there two routes went west toward the Mississippi River, one to East St. Louis and the other to Alton, Illinois. (Today the Road's path is followed, for the most part, by U.S. 40 and I-70.).

Discover the twists and turns of one of America’s great infrastructure projects with this “engrossing history of the creation of the U.S. interstate system” (Los Angeles Times). It’s become a part of the landscape that we take for granted, the site of rumbling eighteen-wheelers and roadside rest stops, a familiar route for commuters and vacationing families. But during the twentieth century, the interstate highway system dramatically changed the face of our nation. These interconnected roads—over 47,000 miles of them—are man-made wonders, economic pipelines, agents of sprawl, uniquely American symbols of escape and freedom, and an unrivaled public works accomplishment. Though officially named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, this network of roadways has origins that reach all the way back to the World War I era, and The Big Roads—“the first thorough history of the expressway system” (The Washington Post)—tells the full story of how they came to be. From the speed demon who inspired a primitive web of dirt auto trails to the largely forgotten technocrats who planned the system years before Ike reached the White House to the city dwellers who resisted the concrete juggernaut when it bore down on their neighborhoods, this book reveals both the massive scale of this government engineering project, and the individual lives that have been transformed by it. A fast-paced history filled with fascinating detours, “the book is a road geek’s treasure—and everyone who travels the highways ought to know these stories” (Kirkus Reviews).

After 12 years of research, plus thousands of miles driving Germany's Autobahn, Rask, a lifelong automotive and racing enthusiast, exposes half-truths and myths about the speed factor in traffic accidents in America. He analyzes the combination of safety and speed on the Autobahn and offers an exciting new direction for America's interstates that would make speeds of 100 mph or more commonplace on open stretches of rural freeway, with far greater safety than ever imagined at 55 mph. Includes bandw photos of highways and vehicles. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Before the era of the interstate highway, before there was even a Route 66, there were auto trails. For a brief period in the early 20th century, these privately funded roads bridged the gap between the era of the stagecoach turnpike and the age of the federal highway.With names like the Yellowstone Trail, the National Old Trails Road and the famed Lincoln Highway, they offered the newly unshackled American tourist a way to hit the open road - even if that road was dirt or gravel, and you were liable to get lost along the way.The visionaries who built those roads and the carmakers who made it all possible. Did you know Henry Ford once set the land speed record ... on a frozen lake? Or that the National Football League was founded in an auto dealership? Or that the man behind the Lincoln Highway build the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and made Miami Beach a winter resort?You'll read about the first person to drive from coast to coast in an automobile (with a goggle-wearing bulldog) and the around-the-world contest that inspired the movie The Great Race. You'll also find stories of Dwight Eisenhower's 1919 cross-country trip that helped convince him of the need for an interstate highway system; and the auto camping craze that led to the first motels.But most of all, you'll learn about the auto trails themselves: How they came into being, their role in paving the way our federal highways, and their eventual demise. It's all here in a single volume packed with details and more than 200 historic and modern images. From the author of "Highway 99: The History of California's Main Street" and "Highway 101: The History of El Camino Real," "America's First Highways" is a companion to "Yesterday's Highways" and Volume II in the America's Historic Highways Series.

Take your readers on a trip back in time with this engaging book about the history of the first U.S. transcontinental highway. The trip begins with Carl G. Fisher and his vision of the Lincoln Highway, and continues through the planning, construction, use, and legacy of the great road.