Life is an Interstate

In Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road, main character Sal Paradise travels all over the country, both by hitchhiking and riding busses. Living in a day and age where cross-country travel is done almost exclusively by airplane, it is hard to imagine the magnitude of his travels, and the time spent on the road. But what many people may not realize is that such travel was an extremely new luxury for Americans. Interstate highways such as the “shining Route 6” had only just been brought to life during the timeframe of this story, in the mid 1950’s.
In order to get a better sense of the impact of the interstates on travel during the setting of On the Road, I did a little online research into the history of these enormous highways. With the help of information on the website geography.about.com (http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/interstates.htm), I found that these roads were commissioned by President Eisenhower shortly after he was elected, as part of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1953. Eisenhower felt the need for a national highway system after two important experiences in his life. First, he had traveled in a military automobile caravan across the country prior to World War II. There he found the established system of roads far from ideal, as the convoy traveled for 62 days, at an average speed of 5 miles per hour, before reaching California from New York. Secondly, as a general in the Second World War, he experienced first hand how the superior construction of the German Autobahn allowed the Axis forces unparalleled flexibility and speed for transporting materials and troops. So, upon becoming president, one of the first things that Eisenhower did was begin constructing the very roads that Sal Paradise used for his explorations, and the very roads that we rely upon, and take for granted, in our travel today.