Tuesday 26th June 1956

The US Congress approved the Federal Highway Act, which allocated more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of interstate highways; the largest public construction project in US history to that date. President Dwight David Eisenhower had first recognized the value of a national system of roads after participating in the U.S. Army’s first transcontinental motor convoy in 1919 over the Lincoln Highway; during the Second World War, he had admired Germany’s autobahn network. In January 1956, Eisenhower called in his State of the Union address (as he had in 1954) for a “modern, interstate highway system.”