Transcontinental Motor Convoy
“Go through the gates! Prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway!” [Isaiah 62:10]
After World War I, leaders in Washington became concerned about the state of the nation’s roads. The automobile was still a relatively new invention, so most transcontinental travel depended on a few train tracks spanning the country. The U.S. War Department wanted to know if the nation’s roads could handle coast-to-coast movements of Army units by road. As a test, the Transcontinental Motor Convoy – some 80 military vehicles and 280 soldiers – took an epic road trip from Washington, D.C. to California. The starting date was July 7, 1919.
Like the cavalry of old, Army scouts would ride in advance of the convoy to check out the conditions that lay just ahead, except they were mounted on Harley-Davidsons instead of horses. The convoy traveled over dirt roads, rutted paths, winding mountain trails, and shifting desert sands roughly along the route of present-day Interstate 80.
Many areas were nearly impassable, and the men often had to push or pull the heavy trucks along through the summer heat. The vehicles frequently broke down, got stuck in quicksand and mud, and sank when roads and bridges collapsed under them. In spite of the hardships, 62 days after it left Washington, D.C., the convoy reached San Francisco. It had covered 3,251 miles, averaging 58 miles a day at an average speed of 6 mph. The official report of the War Department concluded that the existing roads in the United States were “absolutely incapable of meeting the present-day traffic requirements.”
One of the Army officers on the convoy was 28-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later said the roads they encountered “varied from average to non-existent.” Eisenhower never forgot this grueling experience, and one of the most important things he did after becoming president was to create the interstate highway system. Construction began in 1956, and the entire interstate system now has a total length of 46,837 miles. It’s the largest highway system in the world and the largest public works project in history.
Did you know the Bible speaks of an army of highway workers that will go before the Lord? “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God’” (Isaiah 40:3). Not only did John the Baptist fulfill this prophecy, but we too may help make straight roads that guide others to heaven.
