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Today in Interstate History

Senator Albert Gore, Sr. Photo courtesy of U.S. Congress.

January 9, 1957

Albert Gore, Sr., of Tennessee said that the new Interstate Highway construction program was off to a slow start. Gore voiced those concerns at a hearing of the Senate Roads Subcommittee, which he chaired. His complaint came two days after U.S. Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks had told the same group that highway construction was "moving along very rapidly." Gore's own assessment highlighted not just the divergent views on the status of the project but also how fervently he, as a champion and co-sponsor of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, continued to monitor its implementation.