November 1, 2018, marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of Interstate 95 in its entirety in Delaware. Its construction was part of the largest public works project in American history, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, signed into law by Pres. Dwight Eisenhower. The bill allotted for a nationwide 41,000-mile "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways." The federal government would pay 90 percent of the construction cost. However, the federal money was slow to arrive. The State of Delaware proceeded on its ...
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November 1, 2018, marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of Interstate 95 in its entirety in Delaware. Its construction was part of the largest public works project in American history, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, signed into law by Pres. Dwight Eisenhower. The bill allotted for a nationwide 41,000-mile "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways." The federal government would pay 90 percent of the construction cost. However, the federal money was slow to arrive. The State of Delaware proceeded on its own, using secured revenue bonds that would be repaid by tolls charged to drivers. On November 15, 1963, Pres. John F. Kennedy was part of a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Mason-Dixon Line that officially dedicated the initial 11-mile Delaware Turnpike, a stretch of highway between the Maryland state line near Newark and the Delaware Memorial Bridge. It was another five years before the highway reached Pennsylvania.
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The Images of America series offers an outstanding way to get to know local American places and their history. I have read many books from Images of America over the years with the goal of reading at least one book about a locality within each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. (I am not, to be fair, especially close to meeting this goal.) I hadn't read a series book on Delaware but found this book "Building Interstate 95 in Delaware" (2018) in the Washington, D.C. public library. The author, William Francis, is a Delaware native who returned to the state after a long absence to write five books on the state for Images of America together with several other books.
I had travelled through Delaware frequently going north from Washington, D.C. on Amtrak and going south in earlier days when I lived in Philadelphia. Francis' book was written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of I-95 in its entirety in Delaware on Novermber 1, 1968. The Delaware portion of I-95 is located in its entirety within New Castle County, the northernmost and most populous county of Delaware. The book covers the long, difficult process of building I-95 together with its auxilliary and connecting roads. The pattern of the roads will be confusing to a reader without detailed prior familiarity with them. The book also covers the history of earlier roads in the day before completion of the Delaware Turnpike.
The Delaware Turnpike was part of the large system of interstate highways constructed under the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 signed by President Eisenhower. As the author emphasizes, the full understanding of the national system requires understanding of its impact at the local level. Francis states "each town and city along its route was greatly affected, and affected in different ways depending on the local scene." The Turnpike benefitted some communities while having a much more problematice impact on other areas.
The book includes many images of highways, their engineering, and their interchanges with each other, including many aerial photos of large areas. For me, however, the highways were the least interesting part of this story. Instead, I was fascinataed by the many images of places large and small depicted in the book together with Francis' annotations and commentary. The book is essentially a tour of much of northern Delaware from early days, dating back to the Revolutionary Era in some cases, to the present.
The book took me through many cities and towns of which I knew little. These include the cities of Wilmington, Newark, and New Castle as well as smaller places such as Bear, Christiana, Glasgow, and more. There are photographs of old main streets and of store fronts, of schools, churches, and residences large and small. The scenes often are dated by the makes and models of the cars on the streets. Photos of the pre-I-95 places are juxtaposed with photos of the cities and towns after the interstate was constructed. The book offers a quick drive-through perspective of many communites through time.
The book also includes many photos of the rivers that were crossed by the Interstate, including the Delaware and the Christiana Rivers. There are photos and discussions of the large industries, including shipbuilding, that once dotted their shores. At one time, a trip on a ferry was required to cross over from Delaware to New Jersey, resulting in long lines of cars and delays. And of course the beautiful Delaware Memorial Bridge is part of the story. It is not part of I-95 but connects with it. The Delaware Memorial Bridge is a two-span suspension bridge with opened both spans in December, 1969.
In short, even though I was confused by the maze of highways and concrete, I enjoyed the journey through Delaware and its places and history. The book brought an important aspect of our nation's first state to life and was a rewarding stop through my attempted tour of the local history of our states with Images of America.
