Local News

Life is a highway
BY JEFFREY GAUTREAUX, SUN STAFF WRITER
Published on: June 28, 2006

Previous to leaving Tucson, the Convoy had fair sailing with little experience on unimproved desert roads. Making their plans on past experiences, they advised the Yuma County Commercial Club that they would be in Yuma by Thursday night.
Article in 1920 Yuma newspaper provided by Yuma County Historical Society

They weren’t there Thursday night. And they weren’t there Friday or Saturday either. The members of the Bankhead National Convoy, which was traversing the southern United States in 1920 to obtain accurate data about the country’s roads for military and civilian purposes, would not get to Yuma until Sunday at 1 p.m.

In attempting to cross Arizona in September 1920, the convoy was forced to camp for the night at Sentinel and Mohawk because of blowing sand and roads riddled with chuckholes. Once the convoy of 48 trucks, seven cars and three motorcycles with 23 officers and 160 enlisted men reached Wellton, they said the roads into Yuma were much better. But they had seen firsthand how difficult crossing the desert could be without well-built roads.

The convoy from Washington, D.C., to San Diego — and another similar one that drove from D.C. to San Francisco in 1919 and included a young Army officer named Dwight Eisenhower — were instrumental in showing the need for a nationwide interstate system to improve the flow of military units and goods across the country.

More than three decades later, Eisenhower, then as the sitting president, would sign a bill that would create the Interstate system. That bill was signed 50 years ago today.

"Earlier that month, Eisenhower had entered Walter Reed Army Medical Center after an attack of ileitis, an intestinal ailment. He was still in the hospital on June 29, when a stack of bills was brought in for signature. One of them was the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the landmark bill for which he had fought so hard. He signed it without ceremony or fanfare."
From the article "Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956: Creating the Interstate System" by Richard F. Weingroff, included in the summer 1996 issue of Public Roads, the magazine of the Federal Highway Administration

Now half a century after Eisenhower created this system which has grown enormously, the nation is celebrating its freeways. A "Celebrate the Interstate" convoy has been on the road from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., to retrace, in reverse, the route that first convoy took. The convoy began June 16 and is scheduled to reach the nation’s capitol today.

An Arizona Department of Transportation maintenance truck joined the commemorative convoy June 18 at Salt Lake City and drove to Laramie, Wyo., June 19 and then traveled to Cheyenne, Wyo., June 20, before returning to Arizona.

Arizona has 1,150 miles of interstate highways, most of which were built in the 1960s and 1970s. ADOT says that the freeways have been a primary factor in the state’s economic growth and have cut travel times and increased safety immensely.

In 2006, the entire interstate network includes 46,000 miles of highway, 55,000 bridges, 82 tunnels and 14,000 interchanges, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

"The impact of the interstates has been absolutely enormous," Bill Ordway, ADOT director from 1974 to 1985, said in a release.

"It’s a good thing we built them because look at all the growth the stage has experienced. The interstates tied the whole state together. They tied the whole country together."

"The convoy had traveled from Washington, D.C., all the way to Arizona, yet its officers said the worst roads it encountered were those between Tucson and Yuma."
1920 Yuma newspaper article

Southern Arizona clearly needed to improve its roads, judging by the reports of the Bankhead Convoy. In the mid-1960s, those improvements came in the form of Interstate 8, which connected Yuma to the nationwide system. The four-lane highway east to Gila Bend crossed through the Gila Mountains and sped up the trip to Phoenix. Interstate 8 also connected Yumans with San Diego to the west.

ADOT District Engineer Paul Patane said freeways helped Arizona to take advantage of commerce on a much larger level. "The interstate system was originally built for the military, but it linked Arizona to the global economy," he said.

Although I-8 was now in place, for years those driving through Yuma still had to take Business Route 8 and travel down 4th Avenue to cross the Fourth Avenue Bridge, which had been constructed in 1956, according to Patane. In 1978, the 2,700-foot freeway bridge over the Colorado River was completed after two and a half years of construction, according to The Sun archives.

Installing the bridge and skirting traffic around Yuma adhered to the original principles of interstates: a connected system with a consistent design concept, controlled access, no commercial establishments on the right-of-way and always at least four lanes.

These concepts were clearly laid out in the bill signed 50 years ago today. Eisenhower’s commitment to the
interstate concept and his vision were honored in 1990 when the entire interstate system was renamed the "Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways."

According to Public Roads magazine, interstates quickly became very popular, in many cases passing their usage levels well before estimates. The system has provided reliable long distance movement and improved the productivity of the nation.

Public Roads said that Eisenhower never wavered in his commitment to the need for freeways. He said it was as necessary to defense as it was to the national economy and to personal safety. The members of the Bankhead Convoy that went through Yuma likely felt that way too, especially after the long haul through the desert of Arizona on little more than trails.

And the worst was not over. The convoy still had to contend with the plank road that led west through the sand dunes.

From 1912 to 1927, the Plank Road allowed travelers to cross over what is now the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, according to an article in Spring 1970 issue of The Journal of San Diego History. The one-lane road with occasional turnouts resembled a railroad track but for automobiles. Often there were disagreements over who had the right of way and travel was often very slow.

In 1926, the state of California built U.S. 80, a two-lane asphalt road from Holtville to Yuma that ended widespread use of the Plank Road. For the most part, U.S. 80 would later become I-8.

Fifty years after the interstate system was created, all of America’s travelers can thank the work of those, like Eisenhower, who drove before there were rest areas or passing lanes, those who had to deal with one-way plank roads rather than multiple lanes of smoothly-engineered concrete.

"It is morally certain that the big trucks in the convoy will have trouble and lots of it between Yuma and the Imperial valley and if a few of them do not fall by the wayside we miss our guess. However, there is one consolation in looking on the dark side. It will bring to the government’s attention, like nothing else, the absolute necessity of a first class road for military purposes on the International boundary line."
1920 Yuma newspaper article



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