June 29, 1956
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) ushered in the Era of the Interstate System by signing into law the landmark Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. At the time, he was at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, recuperating from major intestinal surgery that had been performed 20 days earlier.
To say that June 29 was a busy day for the 34th president would be an understatement. Eisenhower’s various other activities on that Friday involved everything from his going up and down steps as part of his recovery to meeting with Vice President Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994) about Southeast Asia.
Eisenhower found time amid that packed schedule, however, to sign the highway bill in his hospital room without any other sort of fanfare. While this presidential action was conspicuous for its lack of pomp and circumstance, the creation of a program for financing and building the Interstate Highway System had indeed been a top priority for the 34th president. In formally announcing that his boss signed the bill making that highway network a reality, White House Press Secretary James C. Hagerty (1909-1981) told reporters that the president “was highly pleased.”
The provisions in Title I of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 included expanding the number of miles for the Interstate Highway System from 40,000 (per the 1944 Federal-Aid Highway Act) to 41,000. (The metric equivalent of those miles is 64,373.8 to 65,983.1 kilometers.) Title I also authorized $25 billion during the period between 1957 and 1969 as the federal share (90 percent) for building Interstate highways. Title II of the new law established the Highway Trust Fund as a dedicated source for funding the Interstate Highway System and stipulated that the new network would need to operate on a pay-as-you-go basis.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks (1893-1972), whose department’s divisions included the Bureau of Public Roads, told reporters on that same Friday that the program for the Interstate Highway System would give the economy a huge boost, create thousands of jobs nationwide, and bring about safer highways. Weeks also called the new undertaking “the greatest public-works program in the history of the world.”
The signing of the bill three days after it had passed Congress was not the only high point for Eisenhower at that time. On the following Saturday morning, he and his wife Mary Geneva “Mamie” Eisenhower (1896-1979) finally left the hospital for their farmhouse in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, so that he could continue his convalescence there. (The accompanying official portrait of President Eisenhower was taken shortly thereafter.)
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on the origins of the Interstate Highway System, please check out https://highways.dot.gov/highway-history/interstate-system/50th-anniversary/history-interstate-highway-system
Additional information on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s role in creating that highway network is available at https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/interstate-highway-system
Transportation History 
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