Reviewed by
Theresa Welsh

A Review of Divided Highways by Tom Lewis

The Interstate Highway System forever changed American culture, but the engineers who built it were not thinking about that. They were concentrating on accomplishing the biggest building project in the history of the US. Lewis' book is a chronicle of what they built and how it affected the way we live today. In the pages of his book, we meet some of the people who made it happen. Thomas Harris McDonald was the nation's first bureaucrat to oversee federal roads, and he mainly wanted to keep farmers from being stuck in the mud. But his vision of "better roads" grew to something much more grandiose, and a generation of civil engineers found good employment making that vision a reality. They built huge cloverleaf intersections, mighty elevated freeways, and blasted through mountains to join the east coast with the west coast, north with south.

The book is interesting reading, but perhaps goes off in too many directions, giving only a taste of the social changes wrought by these massive new highways. It explores citizen efforts in urban areas like New Orleans and San Francisco to stop ugly highways; in these places, they were successful. But in other cities across America, neighborhoods were destroyed when houses were taken by the state to build a federally-designated section of the Interstate HIghway System. The question of whether limited access highways should be built in cities was one of the most controversial aspects of the project.

The most surprising thing to me was the miscalculation by the highway designers of the social effects of highways. They somehow thought expressways would bring people INTO cities, not thinking that these massive concrete strips would devastate neighborhoods and make it easier for people to live in the suburbs. The business community generally thought they would be beneficial too. It was left to the lowly homeowner, whose neighborhood -- with its web of comfortable relationships  --  faced the bulldozer, to see the true impact. The government could pay people for their home, but could not pay them for the tangential losses that went with having to move from a place they loved and from daily interaction with people they knew. Nor did the new expressways bring about the results the planners hope for. Gradually, a nation began to learn that highways are not the answer to all our transportation problems.

In my own city -- Detroit -- the building of I-75 tore apart a thriving Hispanic neighborhood in the city, and out in the inner ring suburbs (where I live), a connecting freeway (I-696) was held up for ten years as the tiny municipality of Pleasant Ridge protested the gutting of its small area. In the end, they lost and the highway was built. Today there is a "sound barriar" wall along the freeway, which is down in a ditch, but the constant hum and buzz of the traffic is a steady background noise for the lovely homes that are adjacent to it. Pleasant Ridge is not quite as pleasant as it used to be.

It is good to look to the past to avoid repeating costly mistakes, Yes, we need the Interstate Highway System, and we can honor the memory of President Eisenhower who initiated this ambitious and far-reaching program to bring to America "better roads." The engineering accomplishments are stupendous. I personally watched as I-696 was built and marveled how the engineers tunneled under busy Woodward Avenue and never had to close it down; they built the freeway with little disruption of traffic and I remember the day it opened. It was immediately full of traffic, becoming part of an eventual beltway that will ring Detroit, much like Atlanta and Cinncinati have beltways. I am familiar with the highways in those places because my family has made many trips down I-75 to Florida. 

How amazing it is to take one road that passes a few miles from my home in Michigan and just stay on that road all the way to the Sunshine State! We travel through Cinncinati, some times preferring to take the bypass, and keep going through the beautiful states of Kentucky and Tennessee, where I-75 has some spectacular scenery, and on through Atlanta, where again, we can take a bypass if we want. We continue through Georgia (which we always joke should be called "the endless state" because it takes the longest time to get to the bottom of it) and are always happy to reach Valdosta, the last city until you get to Florida. We love to listen to the truckers on the CB and even enjoy the clutter of fast food places along the way. Stops at Cracker Barrell and Waffle House are a fun part of the highway experience. Getting a motel is easy; they are at every exit.

I think Tom Lewis admirally captures the mixed feelings we all have about these interstates. I wonder what President Eisenhower would think if he could come back today and see what he started. Poor old Ike wanted better highways because, as a young soldier, he had been in a convoy of trucks stuck in the mud and he thought we had to have a better way to move men and material in an emergency. Yes, like most projects that get huge funding, there was a military purpose to building the highway system. Rather than moving troops, today the Interstate Highways System moves goods and people. Trucking was given a huge boost, and vacationers can travel a lot further form home, in comfort and ease. These massive ribbons of concrete are the glue that holds our nation together. Ugly and divisive, often, yes!! Engineering marvels that let us travel safely at high speeds over long distances? You bet!

To The Seeker book reviews