ShawneeDispatch.com

The Kansas Speedway was the site Friday of a celebratory detour.

A convoy of about 110 vehicles came to the NASCAR venue as part of a celebration of the United States Interstate system's 50th anniversary, and drove a lap around the oval before several state and local officials spoke. The convoy included seven vehicles that were part of a larger convoy of 19 or 20 vehicles making their way on Interstate 80 from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. The seven vehicles had broken off to hit Interstate 70 and visit Abilene, the boyhood home of President Dwight Eisenhower, who is credited with kick-starting the U.S. interstate highway system.

On June 29, 1956, Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act, which provided 90 percent of the construction costs for the new highway system that would eventually span 46,667 miles, the largest public works project in U.S. history.

After the convoy's "victory lap," the speakers included Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan., Wyandotte County Unified government Mayor Joe Reardon, and the secretaries of transportation for Kansas and Missouri, Deb Miller and Pete Rahn. Dozens of people, mostly employees of the day's corporate sponsors, attended the event. A note of weirdness was added by a troupe of actors from the Renaissance Festival in Elizabethan garb.

Reardon said he'd recently visited Croatia, where U.S. engineers were helping construct a national highway system there. The visit made him appreciate the importance of the U.S. highway system, he said.

Moore called the interstate highway system "the backbone of the economy," and said a study had shown one-fifth of economic progress was due to the highway.

Mary Peters, former administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, said the system has "lived up to every promise made" about it before it was built.

Dan Stanley, chief of staff and senior vice president of the American Trucking Associations, informed the crowd that the interstate proposal failed the first time it went to Congress, but that Eisenhower helped bring it back before the body by convincing its members that the system was necessary to marshal "the economic power unleashed by World War II." It was, Stanley said, "a big idea" that transformed the nation socially and economically.

All of the speakers emphasized the importance of continuing to invest in the highway system for its maintenance and modernization.

Riding in the convoy was the great-grandson of Eisenhower and the author of a book on the system's history.

Merrill Eisenhower Atwood, the descendant of Ike, and Dan McNichol, author of "The Roads That Built America," a history of the U.S. Interstate system, rode in McNichol's 1951 Hudson Pacemaker.

Both said the trip had been educational and fun.

Atwood said "I learned a lot about highways and history" traveling with McNichol.

Atwood added that he hoped the convoy would raise awarness of the importance of the interstate highway system to the country and that it would help "everyone appreciate the vision my great-grandfather had."

McNichol, for his part, said of the trip, "I love it."

The author said he'd made the journey "a bunch of times," and has put 25,000 miles on the 55-year-old Hudson.

"I feel like a character in a movie," he said, of driving the old car across the country. That's because it makes him appreciate how difficult and uncomfortable long-distance driving was the in the past, he said.

For example, McNichol said, while driving through the desert, he had to keep the car's heater on in order to keep the engine from overheating.

Kim Stich, an informational specialist with the Kansas Department of Transportation, said the department was pleased with the event.

"This is the only swing convoy in the entire nation," she said.

Kansas Interstate Numbers Box

All numbers from Kansas Department of Transportation

The first section of the Interstate, an eight-mile section just west of Topeka, was built in 1956. Missouri claims the first section was in its state.

There are 874 Interstate miles in Kansas

Of the total vehicle miles traveled in the state, 24 percent are on the Interstate Highways.

40 percent of commercial truck travel in Kansas is carried on the Interstate.

The total vehicle miles traveled in Kansas since construction of the Interstate began has grown by 197 percent.

156,000 vehicles per day travel on the state's most congested Interstate highway, the six-lane section of I-35 from 67th Street to 75th Street in Johnson County.