Today In History with Bob Carikker | The US Interstate System

UL History Bob Carriker joins us on Thursdays for a fun take on history. This week he talked about the creation of the Interstate highway system in the United States. Did you know there is a defense element to the project?

Listen to the segment below:

From History.com:

On June 29, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The bill created a 41,000-mile “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” that would, according to Eisenhower, eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” At the same time, highway advocates argued, “in case of atomic attack on our key cities, the road net [would] permit quick evacuation of target areas.” For all of these reasons, the 1956 law declared that the construction of an elaborate expressway system was “essential to the national interest.”