Highways Change the Face of America
This offramp near the Missouri town of Oak Grove is typical of many interstate exits -- busy with cars and trucks and crowed with fast-food chains. Residents say there were one or two small gas stations here before the I-70 was built. Frank Morris, KCUR hide caption
Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower signed the act creating the Interstate Highway System.
It represents the largest earth moving project in human history -- so large that it's been called the "51st state."
As Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports, the highway system accelerated suburban development, changed shipping, leisure travel and American culture as a whole.