click to sign up for email alerts

Today in Interstate History

Kansas Completed Its First Stretch of Interstate

August 31, 1956

In yet another milestone for the Interstate System, the Kansas State Highway Commission awarded a contract to the Koss Construction Company to pave a section of U.S. 40 -- now I-70 -- a few miles west of Topeka. Construction on that section had begun prior to the Federal-Aid Highway of 1956 being signed into law, but the paving would be resumed with Interstate funds under the new contract. That Kansas-based project therefore became the first one in which actual paving took place under the provisions of the new law.