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Today in Interstate History

December 13, 1968

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Alan S. Boyd announced the addition of 1472.5 miles to the Interstate System. Those extra miles had been authorized earlier in the year under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968. The added mileage, Boyd explained, would "lend more flexibility to the entire system to permit it to meet the tremendous changes in population and development that have occurred since the original 41,000 mile network was charted." Under this new allocation, the longest segment added to the Interstate System measured 125 miles in Texas between Amarillo and Lubbock; the shortest was a half-mile Sioux City-South Sioux City spur in Iowa.