In the summer of 1919, Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower participated in an Army expedition that was to make a lasting impression on the young officer, and was to have an even greater significance for the United States when he later became the 34th President.
The first Transcontinental Motor Convoy of 1919, as the expedition was known, consisted of eighty-one motorized Army vehicles which crossed the US from east to west. The convoy set a world record pace for the time, traveling a total continuous distance of 3,251 miles, from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, in 62 days, only five days behind schedule. Average speed was 6 mph and average progress per day was a little over 58 miles. At every stop townspeople turned out to greet the soldiers, many of whom had recently returned from World War I, and to see the latest military equipment and listen to patriotic speeches.
The major objectives of the expedition were to test various military vehicles, many developed too late for use in World War I, and to determine by actual experience the feasibility of moving an army across the continent. A sense of realism was added by operating the convoy under wartime conditions. In the words of the Expeditionary Adjutant Officer it was assumed..."that railroad facilities, bridges, tunnels, etc. had been damaged or destroyed by agents of an Asiatic enemy. The expedition was assumed to be marching through enemy country and therefore had to be self-sustaining throughout"....
Colonel Eisenhower and Major Sereno Brett, joined the convoy the first night out of Washington in Frederick, Maryland as Tank Corps observers. There were 24 expeditionary officers, thirteen other War Department staff observation officers, and 258 enlisted men with the convoy. It was to proceed to San Francisco via the Lincoln Highway (now U.S. 30), a series of roads that "varied from average to non-existent." Ike wrote that the trip was a genuine adventure. "We were not sure it could be accomplished at all. Nothing of the sort had ever been attempted."
The influence of the 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy has been hugely overstated. It only become meaningful after he became president. Eisenhower's accomplishment with the Interstate Highway System was in federalizing it under the excuse of the Russian H-bomb threat. He neither invented the interstate nor introduced the idea into Congress.
He did oversee the form by which it was enacted, for which he ought to be credited and for which alone he belongs on that list. Still, his action in it was part of a long, long series of events, ideas, and actions by automobilists, good roads advocates, and far-thinking States that were already building -- and independently financing -- the modern highway.