To a historian, the Turnpike is one of the last great expressions of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and surely one of the most enduring. To the 15,000 people who built the first 160 miles in a shade less than two years, it was a gigantic project squeezed into an impossibly short timetable.
Today, to more than 200 million motorists and truckers a year, it is a highway that offers savings in time, fuel, and vehicle wear.
In their rush to get to the next exit, it’s likely that most of those travelers today consider the Turnpike to be just another road. Yet, when the first stretch of 160 miles from Carlisle to Irwin opened on Oct. 1, 1940, it was absolutely unique in American transportation. It was the nation’s first superhighway, forming the blueprint for creation of the federally sponsored Interstate Highway network – 43,000 miles of multiple-lane, divided, limited-access roads that American motorists very much take for granted today.
“In an era of jet travel, magnetic levitation trains, and eight-lane interstates, it’s hard to imagine the curiosity and pure marvel generated by what is today commonplace,” wrote Frank Cozzoli, a staff writer of the Harrisburg Patriot and Evening News. “People were so enamored with the highway, they actually drove it for no reason at all, often stopping at the modern service plazas, treating themselves to ice cream at the Howard Johnson’s fountain, and then returning home.”
Designing and building the Turnpike was a massive undertaking. Ground was broken on Oct. 27, 1938, on a 10-mile stretch near Newville, Cumberland County, that would involve excavation of 850,000 cubic yards of earth and rock. The contract amount was $458,058 – a sum that today would buy a very small bridge. L.M. Hutchison of Mount Union, who was an APC officer at that time, submitted the lowest of 23 bids.
First concrete was poured on Dec. 13, 1938, on the foundation of an eight-foot reinforced concrete culvert near Newville. Two days later, Walter Jones and Turnpike Chief Engineer Samuel W. Marshall addressed APC’s convention in Harrisburg. One of the other speakers discussed “German Highways,” a reference to the Autobahn system after which the general Turnpike design was patterned.
With such a short deadline for construction, time was too precious to design the project in its entirety before work began. Because the PWA was scheduled to go out of existence in mid-1940, the Turnpike Commission was supposed to have the highway substantially complete within 20 months (later extended). Within a year of the groundbreaking, some 1,100 engineers were at work grinding out design plans while construction was already underway on sections already contracted.
By working two and three shifts, with huge spotlights blazing through the night in some of the most rural areas, the 155 contractor firms completed the job in 23 months. The design standards were striking for that era – no grade was steeper than 3 percent; no curve was sharper than 6 degrees (and all were designed with spiral easements and superelevation); and 110 miles of the 160-mile total was on straightaways.
Each lane was 12 feet wide, with a 10-foot-wide grass median strip. Seven tunnels, averaging a mile each, were constructed as the means of avoiding the climb over the Alleghenies. Not only did they keep the motorist off the foggy mountaintops, but they also sliced the accumulated climb from 13,000 feet, via U.S. Route 30, to just 3,990 feet.
The historical importance of the Turnpike was obvious even as it was being built. George Briner of Carlisle went to work on a Turnpike crew, driving a petroleum truck, soon after graduating from Dickinson College with a degree in history. “I just wanted to say I worked on the first superhighway,” he said. “I didn’t care what job I did.”
The project was not without its share of incidents. There were labor troubles between established unions and local people who wanted Turnpike jobs in Somerset County. Twenty-one sticks of dynamite were found under a bridge in Bedford County, and some sabotage of equipment was reported. Fights sometimes broke out in the workers’ camps. And at least 19 workers died in construction accidents, four of them in August 1939 in a rock fall inside Laurel Hill Tunnel.
Finally, the great road that everyone was calling the “Dream Highway” was completed. It was opened Oct. 1, 1940 at 12:01 a.m. Because of partisan political considerations, no special ceremonies were held.
Along the highway, 10 service plazas offered travelers Howard Johnson’s food and Esso gasoline. An immediate success, the Turnpike handled an unbelievable 27,000 vehicles on the first Sunday it was open, and 30,000 the second Sunday. In its first year the road carried 2.4-million vehicles, compared to the Commission’s own estimates of 1.3 million and the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads’ pessimistic estimate of 261,000. The 2.4 million annual vehicles that traveled in 1940- 41 represents about 4 days worth of traffic in recent pre-pandemic traffic volume levels. Probably the most striking aspect of the Turnpike’s opening was that it cut an arduous, six-hour drive across Pennsylvania’s mountains via the winding, hilly William Penn or Lincoln Highways to about 2-1/2 hours for the fastest motorists.
By the time Pennsylvania’s initial toll-road expansion ended, the system reached 470 miles in length. More was planned, but the passage of federal legislation in 1956, creating the toll-free Interstate Highway system with its 90 percent federal funding guarantee, put an end to toll road growth. The Pennsylvania portions of Interstate 79, I-80, I-81, I-90 and part of U.S. Route 15 (Harrisburg to Gettysburg) all were proposed in legislation as Turnpike extensions before the Interstate Act came along.
Today the Turnpike continues its legacy of innovation in the ground-transportation industry with a modern-day mission to operate a safe, reliable, customer-valued toll road system that supports national mobility and commerce. Recent advances include designing and building award-winning facilities and structures; investing in wider and smoother roadways; and providing traveler benefits such as All-Electronic Tolling, innovative smartphone apps, and a dedicated 24/7 customer safety and response team.
To learn more about the PA Turnpike’s deep history, please visit https://www.paturnpike.com/about-us/turnpike-history.
This article, written by Dan Cupper, a Harrisburg-based transportation writer, appeared in Highway Builder in 2015 and has been edited and updated to reflect current Turnpike history.
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