Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, and Dirt Trails Evolved into Interstate 35 in Texas

A National System, 1938–1960

186 A National System, 1938–1960 OST states, including Texas, viewed parkways and freeways as luxuries during the depression years. The predecessors to Interstate 35—US 81 and US 77—operated as well-defined (if undivided) interstate highways which, to the delight of local merchants, passed through Texas cities in a zigzag, time-consuming (and oft-confusing) fashion. As early as 1938, the THD was involved in three divided highway projects: an upgraded roadway between Dallas and Fort Worth; a four-mile stretch of US 81 north of Austin, including “service” (frontage) roads; and a freeway between Houston and Galveston—but when the first Texas Highway Planning Survey was released in 1940, the focus was on rural roads, traffic levels, finances, and road life (not parkways or expressways). But things change. OFF-RAMP: AUTOBAHNS AND TOLL ROADS If the first controlled-access parkways were constrained by sharp curves, narrow lanes, and dangerous curbs, they would soon be superseded by expressways and a new generation of toll roads. All were influenced to some extent by the German autobahns. The first autobahn segment had opened in May 1935, and some 800 miles (of a planned 4,300-mile system) were completed by 1938. The autobahns received tremendous publicity and were inspected carefully by Thomas MacDonald . While impressed, the BPR chief viewed the new concept as a luxury, a propaganda tool, and even unsuitable. Autobahns had been designed to bypass German cities just as U.S. cities had emerged as a focus area for BPR highway ≠ planners. During 1937, congressional hearings were held to evaluate the possible development of autobahnlike superhighways in the United States. No decisions were made.1 A few states began to circumvent the venerable but somewhat stodgy BPR. In 1937, the highly regarded Merritt Parkway was completed in southwestern Connecticut without BPR assistance. The following year, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission managed to secure a $26 million grant from the PWA, plus a $32 million loan guarantee from the RFC, to build a new 162-mile fourlane toll road between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania Turnpike would utilize a right-of-way owned by the unfinished Southern Pennsylvania Railroad. In direct defiance of the state’s own highway department and the BPR, the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940 and eventually connected Pittsburgh with Philadelphia. It collects tolls to this day.2 The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1938 had authorized the BPR to assess the feasibility of building six transcontinental toll highways. The results, presented in Toll Roads and Free Roads in 1939, were negative—the BPR’s quantitative analyses indicated that there was not enough traffic to justify any of the proposed routes. Only 172 miles of the proposed highways (in the Northeast, California , and Florida) were expected to cover their projected costs. Another 666 miles were likely to cover only 80 percent of their costs. For the vast remainder of proposed miles, projected revenue would be insufficient. Many of these traffic projections would be proven wrong, but the BPR controlled the purse strings. Proposals to build long-distance superhighways—like a PWA-assisted toll road between Washington, D.C., and Jersey City and a freeway between Minnesota and the Gulf of Mexico—were rejected. The BPR also dismissed “visionary” designers like Norman Bel Geddes as crackpots. In 1939, Bel Geddes had wowed millions of New York World’s Fair attendees with his twelve-lane, 100 mphbased superhighway concept at the General Motors Futurama pavilion.3 The BPR preferred to stick with its guiding philosophy of free highways and incremental development. Stodgy or not, this approach favored a free network of “interregional” highways, utilizing existing rights-of-way wherever possible, designed in conjunction with “master plans” and state highway departments , and funded by gasoline taxes. BPR expressways were designed to accommodate higher speeds than twisty parkways and would be depressed (or elevated) through central business districts in urban areas. Highways would be upgraded to more than two lanes only when traffic exceeded two thousand vehicles per day. The BPR had argued that even two-lane interstates like nearly completed Route 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles were of questionable ∞ National System 187 value. When the BPR finally agreed to support a superhighway for the dense Washington-Boston corridor, the new expressway (present day I-95) paralleled US 1 and involved eight state highway departments.4 Texas was not...