Seventy years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation establishing the Interstate Highway System, initiating what would become the largest public works project in history. On June 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, formally creating the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. His vision for the network was shaped in part by his experience in the 1919 U.S. Army transcontinental convoy and his later observations of Germany’s Autobahn system during World War II. The act authorized roughly 41,000 miles of high-speed interstate highways and established a funding structure in which the federal government covered about 90 percent of construction costs, largely financed through fuel taxes. The project took nearly four decades to complete and profoundly transformed the United States, fueling suburban expansion, reshaping logistics, and redefining the physical layout of American cities.(Historic Vids)