Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway

I was given this book by my children recently after I had told them how much I enjoyed travelling the great roads we have in our country. I'm glad they chose this particular book because it's been one of the most enjoyable I've ever read. Not only is it historically relevant in describing how we developed from pastoral backwoods areas to a system of large cities and suburbs, but it sheds light on many unknown facts of that 200 year journey. For instance, I did not know that our present day Interstate Highway system-something we take for granted when we drive to see grandma a few states away at Christmas time-was originally proposed by President Roosevelt in 1937. He envisioned it as a pattern of roads which would facilitate the movement of men and equipment during the World War which he knew was imminent. Neither did I know the extent to which Huey Long, the populist governor of Louisiana in the '30's, used the construction of roads throughout his state to enlist support from the common people. ("Every Man A King" was his slogan.) So successful was Long that historians say he might have seriously challenged Roosevelt in 1936 had he not been assasinated. Patton points out the fusion of good highways, recently invented air-conditioning and reliable vehicles enabled the entire southern portion of the United States to prosper during the last half of the 20th Century. It was a combination of these three factors which moved us from a predominantly backwards area stretching from Atlanta to Los Angeles into becoming the nation's prosperous Sun Belt. It is this region that has attracted so many new residents and has "driven" the emerging high tech commercial engine which is fueling the unparalled prosperity of our country. From the opening of the first road in America, the Natchez Trace, dedicated in 1803 by Thomas Jefferson, to the 99.9% completed Federal Interstate Highway system, Patton takes us on a journey at once both informative and nostalgic, winding down the roads where the orange-topped Howard Johnsons sat, and out past all the Burma Shave signs lining the roads splitting the wheat fields of Nebraska. I urge all who are interested in learning how the American road evolved to read this book. As a 1951 Ford ad in the book pointed out: "Today the American Road has no end; the road that went nowhere now goes everywhere....on that road, the nation is travelling beyond the troubles of this century, constantly heading towards a finer tomorrow." True then, truer now.