US Interstate System Celebrates 65 Years With America’s First Interstate I-70 In Missouri

It’s been 65 years since Missouri became the first state in the U-S to move ahead with plans for what we now know as the interstate system.

The Show Me State was the first to award interstate construction contracts after President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act in August 1956.

Those initial contracts triggered the construction of I-44 in Laclede County and also I-70 in St. Charles County.

Today, Missouri’s 14-hundred miles of interstate are driven by 21.5 million vehicles each year.