Thirty-five years ago this month, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker bade Godspeed to a convoy of 63 Army trucks leaving Washington on a daring transcontinental trek to prove that the gasoline engine had really replaced the mule. With the motor train rode a young Army observer, Lieut. Dwight D. Eisenhower. When the trucks crawled into San Francisco on Sept. 5, after 60 days and 6,000 breakdowns, the lieutenant was a confirmed advocate of an adequate, all-weather U.S. road system.
This year 66 million Americans, riding in 22 million automobiles, will take to the highways (most of them this month and...