
In 1919, an Army convoy drove cross-country from Washington to San Francisco - wglb
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/07/driving-cross-country-was-crazy-idea-an-army-convoy-set-out-show-it-could-be-done/
======
seltzered_
For some time context, the first New York to San Francisco telephone call was
in 1915:

“Six months later, amidst the celebrations surrounding the Panama–Pacific
International Exposition, on January 25, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell, in New
York City, repeated his famous statement "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you,"
into the telephone, which was heard by his assistant Dr. Watson in San
Francisco, for a long distance call of 3,400 miles (5,500 km).”
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_transcontinental_telepho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_transcontinental_telephone_call)

~~~
darkpuma
I wonder if that was _really_ the first call across that line, or just the
'official first.' I know if I was one of those technicians trying to make sure
everything was ready to be demoed by the biggest celebrity in American
telephony, I'd probably test it myself first to make sure I wasn't wasting
Bell's time working the kinks out of the system.

~~~
saalweachter
I also assume that as you're unspooling the line across the entire United
States, you are also stopping every few miles and calling back to make sure
the line is working.

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ceejayoz
With Dwight Eisenhower on board.

> The heavy vehicles had damaged or destroyed 88 bridges and caused 230 road
> accidents.

No wonder he considered creating the Interstate system to be a critical piece
of infrastructure.

~~~
baud147258
According to Wikipedia, they also repaired the damaged/destroyed bridges.
Strange omission from the article.

"The convoy broke and repaired 88 wooden bridges" [1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_Motor_Convoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_Motor_Convoy)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The most remarkable part of that is that they were willing to risk breaking
bridges then broke them then fixed them on their own without being sued into
doing so by the municipalities that owned the bridges. It truly was a
different time.

~~~
tantalor
Not sure why you're so shocked. This was standard practice back in the day for
measuring & testing bridge capacity; you'd build the bridge then drive a bunch
of heavy trucks over it until it breaks, then rebuild the bridge. That's just
how things were done.

Reference:
[https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26)

~~~
mikelockz
Sounds like modern day software development.

~~~
DenisM
MVB. Minimally Viable Bridge.

------
dmix
> The auto lobby hoped a transcontinental convoy would grease the wheels for
> increases in highway appropriations and drive profits for the sign-making
> industry.

Neat, just like how gov projects still get done today.

~~~
joncrane
To me one of the most sobering experience of my life was visiting Hoover Dam.

Yes, they needed a consortium of companies because no one company was big
enough, they built a railroad, a town, the concrete is still curing, yadda
yadda yadda.

But for me the biggest moment was at the end of the filmstrip, they said "the
government contract was delivered early and under budget." I nearly fell out
of my seat.

No way that ever happens today. Not only the Accentures, GD, Northrup Grummans
of the world, but even the little guys like the ones I used to work for all
use up every dollar available on the contract. If the contract is worth $291
million, then dammit you bill the government $291 million and not a dollar
less! If anything you're figuring out how to do a contract mod to squeeze them
for more money.

It's amazing that, together, multiple of the largest construction companies in
the United States, not only got the job done in record time, but left money on
the table. I'd like to think it might happen again because that's the type of
thing that makes me proud to be an American.

~~~
saalweachter
The Human Genome Project was officially complete in 13 years, instead of the
15 years originally estimated. I'm not sure how it did budget-wise.

~~~
driverdan
That's because of independent researchers forcing the government's researchers
to go faster. They didn't want to.

------
irrational
I just got back from a 2000+ mile road trip. I'm so thankful highway
conditions have improved over the past 100 years.

------
duxup
"Some of the chaos was deliberately engineered mischief. One evening in
Wyoming, Eisenhower convinced the soldiers that their camp was vulnerable to
attack by Native American warriors."

Possibly the ultimate "Oh man this guy..." moment for the soldiers ;)

The guy who discharged his weapon later maybe thought "Ok fine let's play
along and put an end to this..."

~~~
mcguire
And Eisenhower chasing down the messenger to the War Department:
"Crapcrapcrap, this is getting out of hand!"

------
driverdan
For those interested here's Lincoln Highway Assoc. map of the route:
[https://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/map/](https://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/map/)

I plan on driving it by next year.

~~~
briffle
That sounds awesome.. One of my future road trips is to follow Highway 20 from
the Oregon Coast to Boston (the longest highway in the US)

~~~
davidw
Stop by and say hi here in Bend!

Also: if you're not simply interested in following the route just to say you
have, 26 east is _much_ more interesting than 20 east of Bend.

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barking
If you've watched Ken Burns documentary series* (it's on netflix) about The
West, the comical anecdote about a faked attack by the clearly irrelevant
natives isn't so funny any more.

*I had to give up after a few episodes, it was too depressing.

------
trothamel
Probably relevant is "Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip", by Ken
Burns - the story of the first drive across the United States, in 1903.

It's streaming on Amazon Prime at the moment:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B002P3IM3C/ref=atv_dl...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B002P3IM3C/ref=atv_dl_rdr)

------
geogra4
I wonder who the first president to ride a Chinese bullet train will be and
say we need one of those in the US?

~~~
wil421
No way not going to happen. The only way this will happen is if 1) they find a
way to make high speed work on the NA railway gauges and 2) you convince the
cargo companies to make passenger a priority.

1) seems like an engineering problem and 2) seems like a pipe dream.

Option 3) would be build dedicated high speed lines. Unless you’re a
developing nation it sounds way too expensive. Especially a rail system as big
as NA (US, Canada and Mexico are connected, maybe others in Central America).

~~~
TallGuyShort
Never underestimate the ability of some President to waste tens of millions of
dollars reaching the same conclusion after doing exactly what OP suggested.

~~~
Alupis
The California High Speed Rail project failed miserably, and cost the
taxpayers $12.4 billion[1] to go from Bakersfield to Merced or about 160 miles
(two cities nobody commutes from...but I digress).

At it's cancellation point, it was estimated to cost over $98.1 billion for a
Los Angeles to San Francisco route - but we should note the cost estimates
were going up $10+ billion every year they were re-estimated. The entire thing
was supposed to "only" cost around $30 billion when introduced.

To make a High Speed Rail line that covers the entire United States... you're
looking at hundreds of billions, up into the trillions of dollars... if not
more.

At these cost rates, it's well over $200 billion for a straight line between
San Francisco and New York City... but of course it won't be a straight line
and it'll need to go to more places than those two cities in order to attract
any sort of reasonable ridershare.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-
Speed_Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail)

~~~
TremendousJudge
The US is too big to make crossing it by train (even high speed) plausible
when airplanes are a thing. High speed trains proved successful in medium
distances. It sounds reasonable for California (LA-SF) and for east coast
cities (New York-Washington), but covering the entire US is really not very
useful.

However, I'm pretty sure that a large part of the costs of the California rail
are related to private land, which probably isn't an issue through the
majority of the route.

~~~
fiblye
And China is even bigger, yet they never tried any sort of excuses.

When you factor in check in, security, getting to and from the airport which
often isn’t near the city, etc, high speed rail is way better. Drop in 10
minutes before you need to leave and the stations are right in the middle of
town. For distances under a thousand miles, rail can easily be faster.

~~~
Alupis
That is, until more Americans start riding rail and TSA gets involved and now
it's exactly like an airport...

------
joncrane
I mapped the route and if you followed Google Maps, your route would be very
similar to the one they took in 1919.

------
synack
I highly recommend the book "The Big Roads" by Earl Swift if you're interested
in this kind of thing.

------
anonu
That article was good. Good length, informative, interesting. Most articles
these days try to be excessively wordy and long - and end up with too much
filler.

Also, good color on how someone's early experiences help shape their future.
In this case Eisenhower got his highway system 37 years later with the Federal
Aid Highway Act of 1956. Basically it took another World War to get this
going:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System)

~~~
dmix
You don’t like 3 self indulgent paragraphs of what the author was thinking and
doing before the actual story starts and before every new heading? Hey me
neither

Journalists trying to be writers where they insert themselves into the story
and who can actually pull it off are rare. And some _have_ pulled it off
successfully (which is why these people keep trying it). But so many
journalists/bloggers are convinced they fit this category because they went to
school for English literature, despite having little of their own literary
success or a unique personality worthy of a story itself, and think they
should do it for some random big story on a C list news platform. /rant

~~~
anonu
Interesting rant. I suppose that's one of the many reasons I dislike modern
journalism (this New Journalism subjective style of writing ) and I appreciate
you putting it into perspective.

For some reason the famous article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" came to mind:
[https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a638/frank-sinatra-
has...](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a638/frank-sinatra-has-a-cold-
gay-talese/)

But, a quick read through indicates that the author doesn't reference himself
until 10 paragraphs down.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Journalism)

~~~
dmix
They teach New Journalism at most English courses in western universities.

Which isn’t a bad thing but it’s something that writers seem to cling to
because it was cool at one point.

It’s easy to get caught up in the advanced (or artistic) stuff before you
mastered the basics. Inverted pyramids get lost in that noise
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_\(journalism\))

------
spodek
Not sure this community's views on Louis CK, but he had an insightful bit on
cross-country travel then and now:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4)

