The first section of highway that would later become part of Germany’s Autobahn was opened in 1932. Contrary to the common perception, Hitler did not plan or create the Autobahn. He did get on board quickly, though, when his military advisors told him that the Autobahn’s wide double lanes would make it easy to transport troops and equipment in the event of war. Today, many of those stretches have no speed limits, only speed advisories.
A Closer Look at Interstate Highways
Road traffic was a jumble of cars, trucks, buses, pedestrians, and carts pulled by animals in Germany between the wars
One Autobahn origin story says a small group of wealthy motorists wanted their own private highway. Another says those very same men financed the public highway not to flaunt their wealth and power, but in expectation of huge profits.
The rich and powerful specified this radical new type of roadway would ban all pedestrians and all vehicles drawn by animals. This road would have no cross streets and no traffic except for their well-to-do friends. It would have wide double lanes of traffic moving in opposite directions with a median separating them from each other.
Nearly 100 years later, the Autobahn is still the model for superhighways everywhere.
Konrad Adenauer, the mayor of Cologne (and future Chancellor of West Germany), opened the first 20 kilometer/12 mile Berlin section of the planned highway network in 1932 by declaring “This is what the future of streets looks like.”
The 13,210 kilometer/8,200-mile-long Autobahn went on to set new standards for designing roads, managing traffic flows, and engineering highways
The bigwigs with their fancy cars also created an orderly driving culture where drivers knew what to expect of themselves and others because all were obliged to stick by the rules, as true gentlemen (like themselves) do. A founding principle of that driving culture is to keep things moving by using the left lane exclusively for passing. Every car that is being overtaken is obliged to stay in the right lane unless passing another vehicle. Trucks are never allowed in the left lane is another.
Can you guess the fastest speed ever recorded on a public road?
The record for the Flying Kilometer On a Public Highway was set at 432 kilometers/268 miles per hour by a 12-cylinder streamlined Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen driven by automobile racer Rudolf Caracciola, a member of the Motor Sports Hall of Fame.
The Mercedes team needed a straight stretch long enough to accelerate to speed, be timed for the Flying Kilometer, and get the car slowed down and stopped. They chose a 15-mile/25-kilometer section of the Reichsautobahn A5 that was between Frankfurt and a small town called Darmstadt. The record was set in 1938 on what was then (and still is) Germany’s longest 8-lane section of public highway.
That same year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt commissioned a study to determine the feasibility of a north-south and east-west grid of superhighways
World War Two intervened and it was 1944 before the Federal-Aid Highway act was passed. It called for a national system of interstate highways. Eight years later, construction began.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower led the Allies to victory over the Germans in 1945
In 1952, Ike was swept into the presidency by a wave of patriotism and fear of the USSR’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. Soon after his re-election, Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) called it The Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Here are three of the mandates:
The Interstate Highway System will:
- extend from coast to coast and border to border.
- have no oncoming traffic.
- grow along with the population and increases in vehicle traffic.
As of 2024, there are roughly 47,000 miles of interstate highway served by 670 interchanges
Most people aren’t familiar with the Defense Highways part of the name because the American Interstate Highway System has never been taken over by our military forces. One of the national highway’s planned functions was moving military personnel and equipment quickly around the country in case of a dire national emergency, just as was the Autobahn. The highways would have gentle curves and long, straight stretches that could be used as runways, and wide, grassy medians.
Access to the highways was by way of on-ramps that allowed vehicles to gradually work up to the higher speeds of divided motorways. Drivers left the highway by off-ramps that slowed them down and delivered them to the intersection with local roads. Gas stations sprouted at many of these junctions and were soon followed by restaurants and fast fooderies.
For the first time ever, people were able drive coast-to-cost, border-to-border, and everywhere in between without ever encountering a stop sign or red light
Missouri claimed to have the first Interstate highway because it was the first to begin construction. Kansas said that may be so, but so what – ours was the first Interstate project completed. Pennsylvia makes a third argument. You decide.
The U.S. Government paid for ninety percent of the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to build a 40,000-mile network of highways that crisscrossed the nation
The Federal Government gave those construction moneys to state highway agencies, who hired their own road builders for their section of roadway. Awards were often given on a county-by county basis, making it a foregone conclusion that plenty of gravy would be slopped around.
The USA’s Interstate Highway System was based upon the tried-and-true principles established by Germany’s Autobahn, of course
The left lane is intended for higher speeds than the right lane. With two lanes going in the same direction, cars being overtaken must move to the right lane, honoring the left lane as the passing lane. That was 50 years ago. Nowadays, so many people fight to get into the fast lane that they’ve turned it into the slow lane.
How are roads numbered?
All north-south routes are given odd numbers; east-west routes get even numbers. That’s where the similarities between Federal Highway route numbers and Interstate route numbers end. The Interstate highway numbering system is the reverse image of the national highway numbering system. Go figure.
Numbers assigned to US Highways start with single digits up north and in the east and the numbers get bigger as they head south. Interstate Highway route numbers go the other way, with the lowest figures in Florida and California.
US Federal Highway 1 goes from Maine to Florida and was built in the 1920s. Interstate 95 more or less followed the same north-south route many years later.
Except for I-5, all Interstate routes that pass through two or more states have two digits
Three-digit numbers are assigned to ring roads and routes that bypass cities and ring roads. It is said that when Ike approved this national highway network, he was unaware that roadways would go through cities and not around them. Once again, a demonstration of how factual information is deliberately withheld from the chief executive by roomsful of gatekeepers.
I-90 is the longest east-west road in the country. It parallels the Canadian border for 3,000 miles from Maine lobsters to Washington salmon. The longest north-south road is US Highway 1. It runs 2,400 miles from a little back country Maine town only a few miles from Canada to Key West, Florida, 90 miles from Cuba.
Did you know that along the way, US 1 goes through all thirteen original states?
How about how US 1 passes through nearly every major city along the Atlantic Coast? Me, either.
The southernmost section of US 1 was completed when the Overseas Highway was opened in 1938
The literati know that was the year Ernest Hemingway decided Key West had become “too touristy,” packed his bags, and moved to Havana. Until the last bit of US 1 was built, the only way to get to Key West was by rail or by boat. Now any damn tourist with a car can drive right into what was for a long time a sleepy town that wanted to be left alone.
The Overseas Highway portion of US1 is 113 miles long and crosses over the Atlantic Ocean, Florida Bay, y el Golfo de México 42 times
Mile Marker numbers begin at the Southernmost point in the Continental U.S. (MM 0) and go north to Mile Marker 127 in the Florida City-Homestead metroplex, midway between Miami and Key Largo. The most dramatic section is the Seven Mile Bridge from Knight’s Key to Little Duck Key
Make sure to stop at Bud N’ Mary’s in Islamorada (some Florida natives call it the Isle of Morons), considered by many to be the best of the Keys unless you have an urge to get trampled and puked on in Key West by thousands of drunken sunburned cruise ship passengers thinking Hemingway’s Key West must be around here somewhere.
Bud N’ Mary’s Fishing Marina calls itselt the Sportfishing Capital of the World. It is said to have the oldest, largest, and most established fishing fleet in all the Florida Keys for catching everything from sailfish to bonefish. When I’m in the Keys, I always stop there.
Did you know the route of Florida’s Overseas Highway mostly follows the route of Henry Flagler’s railroad?
Work on the Over-Seas Railroad began in 1905. The extension from Homestead was completed and the rail line to Key West started hauling passengers in 1912. In 1935, the Over-Sea Railroad ceased operation after the Labor Day Hurricane killed 400 workers, mostly World War One veterans, and destroyed most of the track with 185-mile per hour winds and a 20-foot storm surge. What’s left has been converted into 90 miles of walking paths and fishing piers. Very cool.
Interstate Highway 95 mostly parallels US 1 most of its 2,400-mile length. Roughly halfway between New York and Miami is a place called South of the Border.
It calls itself a World Famous Roadside Attraction, and don’t they all?
South of the Border is a 350-acre compound that’s hard to believe. You can hook up your RV at Camp Pedro, take a dip in the Pleasure Dome’s indoor heated pool, buy new outfits at Mexico Shop East or West and pick up some souvenir t-shirts at Pedro’s Myrtle Beach Shop. Put on your new duds and dine in the Sombrero Room, which is not located under the giant sombrero that is actually a steakhouse.
Not an RVer? Stay in one of the South of the Border Motor Inn’s 300 rooms each with its own private carport. (Pause here so Eric Idle can go “Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean?”)
Don’t miss Porky’s Truck Stop or the 700-seat S.O.B. Convention Center. As you can easily imagine, S.O.B. is treated as an inside joke among conventioneers.
If you’re at least 16, you can legally buy lots of explosives, including artillery shells, rockets, mortars, Roman candles, bottle rockets, and more at Fort Pedro Fireworks.
If you’re 14, you can get married without parental permission anywhere in South Carolina, that’s the law
A South of the Border wedding would make moments like that extra special. If you need a haircut or a prescription or just want to mail a postcard, a barber shop, drugstore, and post office are on the premises, too. Oh, and don’t forget that life-size standup Fabio cutout at the Trading Post.
After you’ve taken in all you can stand, close your eyes and try to visualize a small beer stand just below the border separating the two Carolinas. Alan Schafer put it there because the adjacent North Carolina counties were dry and he knew he could sell those Tarheels plenty of beer. He hit the jackpot when Interstate Highway 95 came close by and had a nearby exit. Schafer expanded to grab more traffic and more money.
He built motel rooms, a good pairing with beer after a long drive. He put up 100 roadside billboards along I-95 and the place grew like kudzu. For more than 70 years he tacked on more and more of his imaginings, including the largest indoor reptile exhibit in the country, a motocross training facility, a 200-foot-tall observation tower, and a 77-foot tall statue of a Mexican character named Pedro.
South of the Border has been called a gloriously gaudy, quirky, neon-soaked, intentionally campy paradise. It is the epitome of the highway tourist trap. Someone even call it a hidden gem, but there’s nothing hidden or gemlike about it. I call it screaming schlock covered in corn.
There are three kinds of people who drive up and down I-95. Those who went right on by South of the Border without stopping (few can say they didn’t see it), those who stopped once, and those who returned again and again.
Fact Check:
The S.O.B. blog says “Travel & Leisure Magazine named South of the Border one of the Top 10 Kitschiest Roadside Attractions.” I was unable to find any mention of South of the Border on Travel & Leisure’s website. Then Search Assist asserted that ”South of the Border is often recognized as one of the kitschiest attractions in the U.S., frequently appearing on lists of highly quirky attractions.” The only mention of same I could find was by Weather com, which is way short of often and frequently. What I did find was that S.O.B. showed up more often on lists of the most overrated tourist traps in the USA.
I found two studies on tourist traps
Trip Advisor feedback and USA Today’s 23 million Google views were mined for mentions of tourist trap and overrated. The search terms and results are not the same, of course, except that neither search mentioned South of the Border. Be that as it may, I can confidently say that S.O.B. is the best Mexican-themed roadside attraction along South Carolina’s northern border.
Bonus
There are more than 4 million miles of public roads in the United States. The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) says 1 million of them are unpaved.
When asked which state has the most miles of public roads, most people say California or Texas. Second-place California has 400,000 miles of public roads. Texas nearly doubles that with 700,000 miles of public roads across its flat, dusty, wide-open spaces.
When asked which have the fewest miles, most guess those tiny states crammed together up there in the northeast corner of the United States somewhere near Paul Revere territory. Nope, it’s not Delaware or Rhode Island, it’s Hawaii, with 10,000 miles of public roads. To be completely fair, District of Columbia – the non-state – has only 3,445 miles of public roads.
If you strung all 50 states’ public roads together end-to-end, you’d have 13 million miles of straight highway, enough to wrap around the earth 520 times or make 27 trips to the moon.
We need all of those roads and more because Americans drove 3.279 trillion miles in 2024, an increase of 32.3 million miles over the previous year.
