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Adventures in 388: Earl Swift's The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineer-

Started by jon daly, August 17, 2018, 10:49:39 PM

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jon daly

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways

My rekindled road enthusiasm has led me to the library stacks. I've checked out a few books, but this seems to be the best of the lot when it comes to explaining the American network of concrete, steel, and asphalt that I spend a couple of hours a day driving on.

Some of you more expert enthusiasts can feel free to set me right if I'm wrong. But I'll echo Tom Vanderbilt's sentiment from the pages of the New York Times some seven years ago:

"The Big Roads"  is not quite the "untold"  story its subtitle promises: Tom Lewis's "Divided Highways"  (1997) covers a lot of the politics and development of the Interstate System, Phil Patton's "Open Road"  (1986) explores its cultural impacts and Matt Dellinger's recent "Interstate 69"  provides what may be its obituary. Still, Swift has added texture and nuance, as well as narrative economy, to a story containing volumes, and he makes for an ideal travel companion – engaging, not too didactically chatty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/books/review/book-review-the-big-roads-by-earl-swift.html

I'll also add that it's in an easier format to digest than trying to learn or relearn things by piecing them together post by post. One thing I learned was that Lewis Mumford was actually a highway supporter before he became a critic.



jon daly

PS - Vanderbilt's 2008 book --- Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)--- is one that I started and never finished. That's not his fault. I have a tendency to borrow multiple books and just read that one that grabs me the most.

CapeCodder

Are there any guidebooks to the other highways in the US Route system besides Route 66? Do these books have strip maps in them and discuss old alignments?

Hot Rod Hootenanny

Quote from: CapeCodder on August 18, 2018, 06:58:36 AM
Are there any guidebooks to the other highways in the US Route system besides Route 66? Do these books have strip maps in them and discuss old alignments?

Plenty of material on the Lincoln Highway
https://lhtp.com/publications-maps-photos

National Road
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/bibus40.cfm
Please, don't sue Alex & Andy over what I wrote above

Hot Rod Hootenanny

Please, don't sue Alex & Andy over what I wrote above

jon daly

I glanced through this book today before I'm returning it to the library tonight. Some features Swift mentioned, mainly engineering marvels, include:

1. I-40 through the Bristol Mountains in the Mojave. There were proposals to nuke a path through there during the 1960s; even after the test ban treaty was signed. But it was completed conventionally in 1973,

2. The Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel over the James River. I looked in the index to see if this's more famous cousin, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, was mentioned. But I did not see it mentioned in the index,

3. I-90 through the Cascades via the Snoqualmie Pass. This was also mentioned in John McPhee's UNCOMMON CARRIERS as he passed through it as a passenger in an 18-wheeler,

4. The Strait Creek Tunnel in Colorado, and

5. Utah's San Rafael Swell. If memory serves, an early summer/late spring thread mentioned one of the last two as the final piece of I-70 that was completed.


US 89

Quote from: jon daly on September 05, 2018, 01:18:33 PM
4. The Strait Creek Tunnel in Colorado, and

5. Utah's San Rafael Swell. If memory serves, an early summer/late spring thread mentioned one of the last two as the final piece of I-70 that was completed.

What's the Strait Creek Tunnel?

I'm surprised he didn't mention I-70 through Glenwood Canyon as an engineering marvel. That was the last piece of 70 to open, in 1992. The portion over the San Rafael Swell was completed in 1990, though a two-lane Interstate had existed since 1970.

jon daly

That was a typo and an old name. He was referring to the Eisenhower Tunnel nee STRAIGHT Creek Tunnel.



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