Book review: “The Big Roads”

Many Route 66 fans loathe to give much thought to interstate highways. However, to understand the history of the Mother Road, one must also understand the history of the superslabs.

That’s where Earl Swift’s new book, “The Big Roads” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 376 pages, $27, e-book available), comes in.

Subtitled “The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways,” Swift’s book provides a well-researched and evenhanded picture of the remarkable evolution of the United States roads during  the 20th century.

Swift persuasively argues that the U.S. interstate highway system — at 47,000 miles, the largest public-works project in history — is an “epic achievement.” The superslab contains faults — fostering sprawl, disrupting urban neighborhoods, mortally wounding many towns’ Main Streets. But the interstate also does its job extremely well of efficiently and safely moving people and goods across the country.

The evolution of roads doesn’t seem to be the most exciting subject for a book. But Swift’s crisp writing makes “The Big Roads” a fascinating and engaging read. And he keeps digging up obscure pearls that have been overlooked by other historians. Such as …

— The man who probably meant more for the “good roads” movement of the early 20th century was Carl Graham Fisher, a wildly successful bicycle salesman. He later turned his enthusiasm and entrepreneurial skills to selling automobiles, and helped develop the first headlights (powered by acetylene, not electricity). Fisher worked behind the scenes with the Lincoln Highway and developed the Dixie Highway, both which led to the birth of other named highways during the teens. Incidentally, he also built Indianapolis Speedway and created Miami Beach.

— Thomas MacDonald and Frank Turner, who guided the U.S. highway system for decades, turn out not to be bumbling bureaucrats, but bright and conscientious officials who also were exceedingly experienced with road-building. Their decisions on roads were not guided by politics, but by scientific study and sound engineering. It becomes apparent from “The Big Roads” that where they chose to build the interstates was based on relieving traffic congestion and its related ills, and nothing more.

— Although many roadies point to 1926 as the birth of Route 66 and other numbered federal highways, the die was cast with the passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1921. Swift says it was “the most important piece of legislation in the creation of a national network — far more so than the later interstate highway bill […] It brought into being what until then was a fantasy: an improved route into every county seat in the country and every town of decent size, connected to other improved roads, and they to others, enabling a motorist virtually anywhere in the United State to reach any other place of even minor importance without getting mud on his fenders.”

— The Lincoln Highway “doomed” itself in the early 1920s by opposing a re-routing to a new (and better) stretch of road to Wendover, Utah. The vastly better road built by the federal government sucked traffic away and essentially put the Lincoln Highway Association out of business.

— Cities being bypassed is thought as a symptom of the interstate age. But even during the 1920s, towns in the West withered when they were bypassed by federal highway planners. The once-vibrant Lida, Nev., for instance, quickly became a ghost town after it was snubbed by the routing of U.S. 95 and U.S. 6. Today, just two aging residents live there.

— President Dwight Eisenhower often is credited — or derided — for creating the interstates. But the National System of Interstate Highways was formulated years before during Franklin Roosevelt’s final term, when Ike was busy trying to win World War II. “[Eisenhower] was not, by any means, the father of the interstates,” Swift writes. “The system was a done deal in every important aspect but financing by the time Ike entered politics.”

— The Highway Safety Board during the 1950s built six looping test tracks to check pavement formulations, thickness and grading. One of those test loops still exists about a mile west of Ottawa, Ill. Sections of test pavement there, Swift observed three years ago, looked “almost new.”

— Swift punctures a lot of the nostalgia for 1950s cars. Citing a basic Chevrolet from that era, he labeled its carburetor as “twitchy,” brakes as “Stone Age,” and the vehicle “unforgiving” during an accident. “Imagine this car by the millions crowded onto the narrow U.S. highways linking city and country, too heavy and big and loose to handle unexpected curves or come to a fast, safe stop […] And imagine how strange and wonderfully liberating it must have been to steer that lumbering beast up a new interstate entrance ramp.”

— Swift debunks two urban legends — the interstates were designed for rapid movement of troops, and that every fifth mile was a straightaway so warplanes could land. The former is simply not true. Instead of spending extra billions of dollars on towering interstate overpasses, the government decided the military would simply find alternate routes in the rare event it needed to move tall equipment. As for the interstates-as-runways, the possibility was studied, but deemed unworkable.

— The seeds of dissent against the interstate highway system were planted by the Interstate 480 debacle in San Francisco. This double-decker freeway blocked the view of San Francisco Bay and forced the relocation of many homes and businesses. The city refused $280 million from the federal government to build the rest of I-480. And “The Big Roads” spends many compelling pages on how residents of Baltimore fought against the construction of Interstate 40 through their city.

— Highway engineers over time began designing curves and allowed more gentle rises and valleys on the interstates to combat “highway hypnosis” — drivers falling asleep at the wheel because there’s too little to do.

The author begins one chapter in 1981 when his MG Midget broke down on Interstate 44 near the Route 66 town of Conway, Mo. While waiting for repairs at a Texaco, Swift took note of a closed cafe next door that proclaimed itself as “Home of the Little Round Pies.” Years later, Swift found that Little Round Pies were a popular Route 66 invention in Conway’s business district decades before. “Had we broken down back then, our wait would have been more tolerable. Pleasant, even: we would have been stranded in a community, among its people, rather than a long hike away on an outpost geared to momentary pause, to strangers.”

“The Big Roads” affirmed one idea that’s been percolating in my brain — that Route 66 should be federally declared a national trail, much like the Natchez Trace or Blue Ridge Parkway. This would standardize signage along the route, and clarify its trail so new roadies could easily follow it. Before the feds stepped in, America’s roads were a mishmash of jurisdictions, erratic road surfaces, and signs (if they existed at all). Route 66 and its eight state associations have many of the same problems as roads did during the early 1900s.

The book begins with the author taking his daughter on a cross-country journey on the Lincoln Highway. While going through his photographs of the trip later, Swift made this discovery:

“… I found that while I could conjure up scores of mental snapshots of minuscule towns and interesting sights from my hours behind the wheel, I logged almost all of them while driving back roads. […] But the thousands of miles we’d made on the interstates were a blur of far vaguer impressions.”

Highly recommended.