The Jefferson Highway

According the American Automobile Association (AAA), by 1926 the United States boasted over four hundred named highways. Roads like the Lincoln Highway, the National Old Trails Road, and the Midland Trail, among others, embodied a new geography designed to serve the needs of the incipient automobile age. The Jefferson Highway: Blazing the Way from Winnipeg to New Orleans, by Lyell D. Henry Jr. chronicles one of these named roads—a 2,300-mile highway, named in commemoration of the nation’s third president, running through the Mississippi Valley across seven states from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Drawing on local newspapers, early automobile guidebooks and maps, and promotional materials, Henry provides both an administrative history of the Jefferson Highway Association (JHA) and a cultural geography of the highway and its legacy. This history adds to a larger effort to have the highway designated as a “heritage byway” (p. 180). The first half of the book details the work of the JHA, which was established in 1916, at the dawn of the automobile age, with the goal of coordinating and building a north-south, paved, marked interstate highway from Winnipeg to New Orleans. The second half of the book is a historically grounded guide to the remaining vestiges of the highway found in the state of Iowa. As a whole the book offers a snapshot of the beginnings of an automobile landscape and culture that would eventually transform the built environment and reshape daily routines across America.

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