50 Fun Facts About Highways

From the 1920s until a 1954 rule change, American stop signs had a background of which color?

Yellow was chosen because no red material of the day could resist fading in the sun. The 1954 national sign manual finally switched the stop sign to white letters on a red field.

Which country switched from driving on the left to the right overnight on "Dagen H" in September 1967?

Sweden cleared its roads of all non-essential traffic in the early hours of a Sunday to make the change. In a 1955 referendum, 83 percent of voters had wanted to keep driving on the left.

A highway off-ramp passes straight through three floors of the Gate Tower Building in which Japanese city?

Osaka got its drive-through office block after the landowners refused to sell and negotiated for about five years. The elevator skips from floor 4 to floor 8, because the road is the tenant in between.

The Darién Gap, the only break in the Pan-American Highway, lies on Panama's border with which country?

Colombia begins on the far side of a roadless rainforest: the highway stops at Yaviza in Panama and resumes about 66 miles away at the port of Turbo.

Which country's Highway 1, a loop of about 14,500 km around its coast, is the world's longest national highway?

Australia's Highway 1 joins every mainland state capital, though it misses the national capital, Canberra. It outruns the Trans-Siberian Highway by more than 3,000 km.

Which author called Route 66 the Mother Road in a 1939 novel about Dust Bowl migrants heading west?

John Steinbeck used the name in The Grapes of Wrath, his story of a family fleeing the drought-stricken plains. Boosters preferred a grander title for the road: the Main Street of America.

What is the name of Germany's motorway network, where many stretches have only an advisory speed limit?

Autobahn stretches with no fixed limit still carry an advisory speed of 130 km/h, about 81 mph. A driver who goes faster and crashes can be held more liable for the damage.

U.S. Route 1 runs about 2,370 miles from the Canadian border in Maine to which Florida city?

Key West became the end of the line in 1938, when the Overseas Highway across the islands was finished. U.S. Route 1 is the longest north–south road in the country.

Which president, impressed by Germany's motorways in World War II, championed the Interstate Highway System?

Dwight D. Eisenhower had also crossed the country with a 1919 Army truck convoy that averaged only about 5 miles per hour. The system he signed into law in 1956 is officially named after him.

Which state's stretch of U.S. Route 50 was named the Loneliest Road in America by Life magazine?

Nevada turned the 1986 put-down into a tourist campaign, with a passport that drivers get stamped in towns along the way. Finishers earn a certificate, signed by the governor, saying they survived.

Route 66 began in Chicago and crossed eight states to end in which California beach city?

Santa Monica became the western end in 1936, when the route was extended from Los Angeles. The pier is called its symbolic finish, though the official end was a street corner farther inland.

Which San Francisco landmark carries both U.S. Route 101 and California's Highway 1 across the same strait?

The Golden Gate Bridge splits its six lanes unevenly to match the rush: on weekday mornings, four of them run southbound into the city. Tolls are collected only from southbound drivers.

Which scenic road runs 469 miles from Shenandoah National Park to Great Smoky Mountains National Park?

The Blue Ridge Parkway is the longest linear park in the United States, crossing 29 counties in Virginia and North Carolina. At its northern end it runs straight into Skyline Drive.

Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide at Logan Pass in which national park?

Glacier National Park's only through road takes about ten weeks to plow each spring. Up to 80 feet of snow can lie near Logan Pass, in a snowfield that crews call the Big Drift.

Hawaii's winding Hana Highway, with about 620 curves and 59 bridges, is on which island?

Maui's road to Hana covers only about 52 miles from Kahului, yet the drive takes around two and a half hours. Of its 59 bridges, 46 are just one lane wide.

California's Highway 1 clings to sea cliffs and crosses the Bixby Creek Bridge in which coastal region?

Big Sur was one of the most isolated corners of California until the road opened in 1937, after 18 years of construction. Landslides have closed it more than 55 times.

The Great River Road, marked by a green pilot's-wheel sign, follows which river through ten states?

The Mississippi is shadowed by the Great River Road for about 2,340 miles, on a patchwork of state and local roads. The sign shows a steamboat inside the pilot's wheel.

The Overseas Highway through the Florida Keys was built on a railroad bed laid by which Gilded Age tycoon?

Henry Flagler finished his railroad across the islands in 1912, a project nicknamed his folly. After a 1935 hurricane wrecked the line, its roadbed and bridges were sold to the state for $640,000.

Wall Drug, a roadside stop famous for billboards offering free ice water, is in which state?

South Dakota's Wall Drug was struggling until the owner's wife, Dorothy Hustead, thought of advertising free ice water to travelers bound for Mount Rushmore. The water is still free.

The Million Dollar Highway, a cliff-edge stretch of U.S. 550 between Silverton and Ouray, is in which state?

Colorado's Million Dollar Highway has steep drops, hairpin curves and few guardrails. Nobody agrees on the name: one legend says it cost a million dollars a mile, another that its fill dirt holds gold ore.

Which Canadian singer wrote "Life Is a Highway", later covered by Rascal Flatts for Pixar's "Cars"?

Tom Cochrane rebuilt the song from a shelved demo after a famine-relief trip to eastern Africa, looking for something positive in what he had seen. It was his only top-40 hit in the United States.

Which hard rock band released the 1979 album "Highway to Hell", the last to feature singer Bon Scott?

AC/DC cracked the top 100 of the American album chart for the first time with it, peaking at number 17. Bon Scott died in February 1980, less than seven months after its release.

Which singer's 1965 album "Highway 61 Revisited" is named after the road that ran through his birthplace, Duluth?

Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on a highway that ran all the way south to New Orleans and its music. The album was preceded by his hit single "Like a Rolling Stone".

Which singer and pianist's trio made the first recording of Bobby Troup's 1946 song about Route 66?

Nat King Cole recorded it in Los Angeles the same year Troup got the idea, on a drive from Pennsylvania to California. Troup first planned a tune about U.S. 40, until his wife Cynthia suggested Route 66.

Which former "Little House on the Prairie" star played an angel in the 1980s TV drama "Highway to Heaven"?

Michael Landon created the series and directed most of its episodes himself. He said the idea came to him in Beverly Hills traffic, as he watched drivers honking at one another.

Which rock singer turned a ticket for driving 62 mph into a 1984 hit about the national 55 mph limit?

Sammy Hagar was pulled over at two in the morning on a nearly empty four-lane road outside Albany, New York. "I Can't Drive 55" stayed in his set through his years fronting Van Halen.

Which brushless shaving cream lined American highways with rows of small rhyming signs from the 1920s to 1963?

Burma-Shave usually spread each verse across six small signs, spaced so that passing drivers read one line at a time. The signs came down after Philip Morris bought the company in 1963.

Which actor barked orders over the police radio as chief Dan Mathews in the 1950s TV series "Highway Patrol"?

Broderick Crawford had won the Best Actor Oscar for All the King's Men a few years before taking the role. Asked why the hit show ended after 156 episodes, he said they had run out of crimes.

The Tail of the Dragon, with 318 curves in 11 miles, runs from Deals Gap, North Carolina, into which state?

Tennessee holds the whole 11-mile run, where bends carry names like Copperhead Corner and Gravity Cavity. The speed limit, once 55 mph, was cut to 30 mph in 2005.

Roadside mission bells along California's U.S. 101 mark which historic route linking 21 Spanish missions?

El Camino Real got its first marker bells in 1906, each hung from a tall post shaped like a shepherd's crook. The Spanish name means the Royal Road.

What nickname is given to the reflective road studs patented by Englishman Percy Shaw in 1934?

Cat's eyes are named for the way a cat's eyes shine back at headlights, said to be the sight that inspired Shaw. He had been steering at night by polished tram rails, until the rails were taken up.

Which interchange design, first built in America in 1929, sends left-turning traffic around loop ramps?

Cloverleaf interchanges need no traffic lights, but cars joining from one loop must cross paths with cars leaving for the next. Engineers call that conflict weaving, and it limits how much traffic the design can carry.

Which word for a major highway first meant a spiked revolving barrier set across a narrow passage?

Turnpike joins "turn" and "pike", a pointed shaft, and by the 1670s it meant a gate that blocked a road until a toll was paid. The road itself took over the name in the 1740s.

On American highways, signs pointing drivers to parks, campgrounds and historic sites use which background color?

Brown is the federal sign manual's color for recreation and cultural interest. The same code gives green to directions, orange to work zones and fluorescent pink to emergency incidents.

Which shape is painted in white on the pavement of American carpool lanes to mark them as restricted?

Diamond markings give carpool lanes their other name, diamond lanes. The federal manual calls for each painted symbol to be at least 2.5 feet wide and 12 feet long.

Which state gave its name to the sloped concrete barrier that separates opposing lanes on highways worldwide?

New Jersey began using the barriers in the 1950s, in a design developed at the Stevens Institute of Technology. The aim was to stop out-of-control trucks from breaking through narrow medians.

Which Scottish engineer's crushed-stone road surface, later bound with tar, gave English the word "tarmac"?

John McAdam laid crushed stone on a firm base and gave his roads a slight curve so that rain ran off. Tar was added to the recipe later, and "tar macadam" was shortened to tarmac.

Which Roman road, begun in 312 BC and called the queen of roads, ran from Rome to the port of Brindisi?

The Appian Way is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the censor who began it as a military supply road during the Samnite Wars. The royal nickname comes down to us from the poet Statius.

Which empire built the Qhapaq Ñan, a road network thousands of miles long used by relay runners on foot?

The Inca moved everything on foot or by llama: the wheel was not used for transport. Relay runners called chasquis carried messages between stations set a short distance apart.

The Lincoln Highway, dedicated in 1913 as a coast-to-coast auto road, began at which New York City landmark?

Times Square was the eastern end of a route that ran about 3,400 miles to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. Its promoter, Carl Fisher, was also an investor in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Which president signed the 1806 act creating the National Road, the first great federally financed highway?

Thomas Jefferson approved a road from Cumberland, Maryland, toward the Ohio River. By 1839 it had reached Vandalia, Illinois, 591 miles away, where the federal contracts stopped.

Which wartime road did the U.S. Army build north from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, in under eight months?

The Alaska Highway was approved two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. More than 10,000 soldiers built it in 1942, about a third of them Black troops serving in segregated regiments.

Which group, organized in 1880 as the League of American Wheelmen, launched the Good Roads Movement?

Cyclists wanted smooth country roads long before cars arrived, and they won farmers over with pamphlets such as The Gospel of Good Roads. Interest in the bicycle faded as the automobile took over.

Which city's Woodward Avenue carried the first mile of concrete-paved highway in the United States, laid in 1909?

Detroit paved that mile for about $14,000, between Six Mile and Seven Mile roads. In 1920 the same avenue got the world's first four-way traffic light.

Which numbered route, running from Boston to the Oregon coast, is the longest road in the United States?

US 20 outruns every Interstate, though its numbering officially breaks off inside a national park and resumes on the far side. In the east it roughly shadows Interstate 90.

The world's first motorway, known as the Lakes Motorway, opened in 1924 in which country?

Italy's first autostrada ran from Milan toward Lake Como and Lake Maggiore, with a single lane in each direction. Its builder, Piero Puricelli, covered the cost by charging a toll.

In the 1926 U.S. Highway numbering plan, major east–west routes were given numbers ending in which digit?

Zero marks the big cross-country routes, such as U.S. 30 and U.S. 50, while the main north–south routes end in one. Odd route numbers climb from east to west across the map.

The Karakoram Highway, one of the world's highest paved roads, runs from China into which country?

Pakistan and China built the road together, and about a thousand workers died doing it, mostly in landslides and falls. It climbs to about 4,700 metres at the Khunjerab Pass.

The Lærdal Tunnel, a 24.5 km road tunnel broken up by three brightly lit caves, is in which country?

Norway built the tunnel as the last link in a ferry-free road between Oslo and Bergen. The caves, spaced about 6 km apart, are lit to look like a sunrise so that drivers stay alert.

The M25, a 117-mile orbital motorway opened in full by Margaret Thatcher in 1986, encircles which city?

London's M25 is closed into a loop by the Dartford Crossing of the Thames, which is not classed as motorway. A 2003 law even uses the road as the boundary for TV shows made outside the capital.