Happy birthday, interstates

As a fan of public works, Houstonist never really gets tired of looking at TexasFreeway.com, which includes more information than you've ever wanted to know about the history and growth of Houston's freeway system (and the freeways in other Texas cities, too). We've mentioned the site before, but we felt like bringing it up again in light of an important anniversary that slipped by last week without all that many people noticing: Fifty years ago Thursday, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, creating the country's interstate system.

The act committed the federal government to tens of billions of dollars in road construction, which would pay 90 percent of the cost of 41,000 miles of four-plus-lane, grade-separated highways crossing the U.S. Eisenhower pushed for the system on the basis of national defense, saying it would help the military transport troops around the country. The interstate system was officially declared complete in 1991, though there's still a little work to be done. Total construction time: 35 years. Total cost: $114 billion.

Back to Houston: We didn't have the first freeway in the country (that was either the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which opened Oct. 1, 1940, or the 110 in L.A., which opened in December 1940), but we do have an early one: The first section of the Gulf Freeway, the first in Texas, opened in 1948. As we know if you've been in Houston for a while, construction hasn't slowed since then.

So happy birthday, interstates. Sure, you paved over a lot of countryside, you plowed through neighborhoods in our cities, you helped make us a car-dependent culture with no sense of scale. But you also helped spread Stuckey's across the country — and can we really stay mad when we think about a Pecan Log Roll?

Photo: TexasFreeway.com