In its 350-year history, what became US Route 1 went from walking path to wagon trail, from post road to America’s first interstate highway.
Benjamin Franklin measured the road mile by mile. During the Revolution, George Washington led an army along it. Much of the Civil War in the East was fought along the road or near it.
America’s Highway is the story of my three-month trip down US Route 1. My journey begins on the border with Canada in northern Maine. It ends 2,373 miles later in Key West, Florida.
Until I-95 opened in the late 1950s, Route 1 was the ribbon of highway connecting the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard. The road flowed through New York City and Philadelphia, through Baltimore and Washington, D.C., out of Richmond and into the Deep South.
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