Calling all Geezers
I'm a geezer too just a yungin though. Watching a bit on the history channel about early roads and vehicles, in the US. I remember redding a long time back about the adventures of Eisenhower and an a...
Forum Discussion
camperpaul wrote:
... and it was called the "National Defense Highway System".
...........snip.....
In the 60s when war was unpopular, it was renamed the "Interstate Highway System".
:h
You've got it backwards...the word "defense" never appeared in any official name associated with what has ALWAYS been referred to as an "interstate system". The project itself actually began during Roosevelt's term; the word "defense" was sort of added in (to the popular name only) during the Eisenhower administration. (Hence popularly called "the National Interstate and Defense System")
Here quoting from This link.
Federal Archives wrote:
At the end of the war, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 funded highway improvements and established major new ground by authorizing and designating, in Section 7, the construction of 40,000 miles of a "National System of Interstate Highways."
The Bill Eisenhower sought/got vastly expanded the funding for that act and was entitled the "Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956" as can be seen in the image of the original posted at the link posted earlier.
Nowhere in any official document of the time is the resulting system referred to as "The National Defense Highway System".
