The Great Convoy: The 1919 Army Journey That Built the Interstate
How a Military Road Trip Across the Lincoln Highway Changed America

About this book:

In the summer of 1919, eighty-one military vehicles rumbled out of Washington, D.C., chasing a dream across the Lincoln Highway: a coast-to-coast road trip on roads that barely existed. *The Great Convoy* puts you in the passenger seat for this grueling, mud-choked, gear-grinding odyssey to San Francisco, where every broken axle and sand-trapped truck laid bare a national crisis. Among the dust-caked officers struggling to keep the column moving was a young lieutenant colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower, taking mental notes on the strategic nightmare of moving an army across a fragmented nation.

This is more than a travelogue of breakdowns and breakthroughs; it is the origin story of modern America. Drawing on meticulous daily logs and forgotten reports, the book reveals how a two-month military exercise became the catalyst for the Interstate Highway System. You will witness the birth of a national consensus: that a country united by asphalt and concrete was not just a convenience, but a necessity for commerce, defense, and identity. The convoy’s official findings didn't just gather dust—they waited three decades for a President who remembered the mud of Nebraska and the salt flats of Utah to sign the map into reality.

*The Great Convoy* bridges the gap between the Model T era and the superhighway age, tracing the direct line from a 1919 expedition’s near-failures to the 47,000 miles of ribbon-road that define us today. It is a riveting narrative of grit, foresight, and the messy, magnificent work of stitching a continent together. If you have ever merged onto an on-ramp and felt the pull of the horizon, this is the story of who paved the way—and why.