After the war in 1919, Eisenhower was one of the officers tasked with traveling from Washington, D.C. To San Francisco, California with the hopes of encouraging the building of an interstate.
They broke and subsequently repaired 88 wooden bridges. They also had issues crossing the Mississippi River, and dealt with virtually all unpaved roads west of Illinois.
When Eisenhower was elected President in 1952 he still had this in mind, and in 1956, the Interstate Highway Act was voted into law and saw $25 billion allocated towards the constructing of Highways!
Today, the highway mostly allows for easy transport for every day citizens. But the driving force of it's creation was so the US military could easily mobilize from coast to coast!
