On the morning of July 7, 1919, Dwight Eisenhower, at the time a 28-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Army, set out on a drive across the country. For the American military, World War I had illustrated the importance of being able to move large amounts of troops and equipment quickly over long distances, and Eisenhower’s mission was to evaluate whether the country’s emerging network of paved roadways could handle the task.

It was an experience Eisenhower would never forget. “The old convoy had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways,” he later wrote. “This was one of the things that I felt deeply about, and I made a personal and absolute decision to see that the nation would benefit by it.” Decades later, as president, he drew on that experience to push through the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. Eisenhower’s trip, though largely forgotten today, was in fact an important chapter in the history of American infrastructure — and, by helping make automobile travel the fastest and easiest way to move around the country, the history of American culture itself.

Eisenhower had spent World War I at various domestic assignments; he was preparing to ship to Europe when the war ended. Eager for adventure, he jumped at the opportunity to join the Army’s Cross-Country Motor Transport Train, which was announced in the spring of 1919. The plan was to send a convoy of 80 or so trucks and other military vehicles along the most famous road of the day, the Lincoln Highway, which ran between New York City and San Francisco.

Eisenhower was well prepared for the task. One of the convoy’s vehicles was a new innovation, a tank, and Eisenhower had played an important role in figuring out how to use it on the battlefield. Now, during peacetime, he and a friend, Maj. Sereno Brett, were assigned to oversee its operation. Although they missed the opening ceremony at the White House on July 9, the two young soldiers joined the convoy in Frederick, Md., later that day. From there the convoy proceeded to Gettysburg, Pa., to get on the Lincoln Highway.

The imperative of winning World War I had compelled the Allies to thrust unproven technologies into action with scant preparation. At the heart of many of these technologies, like the tank, was a new source of power, petroleum. Beginning at the turn of the century, oil wells in Texas flooded the market with hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude and left the industry searching for ways to put it to use.

Reading these trends, innovators, including Henry Ford, worked to perfect the internal combustion engine. It was one of the many competitors trying to replace humans’ reliance on animal power, but the ubiquity of cheap petroleum made it an easy choice. It took years, however, to make the internal combustion engine reliable and safe; early automobiles had a tendency to explode. And the mass adoption of cars required a unique infrastructure, ranging from filling stations and gas pumps to stronger, wider roads and bridges.

In fact, early on, electric batteries showed the most promise for personal transportation, particularly in urban areas. Although Henry Ford’s cheap, reliable Model T made the personal automobile universally available after 1907, in 1912 Ford and Thomas Edison released an electric version that Ford believed would define American transportation. He might have been right — were it not for World War I and Eisenhower’s convoy.

Electric batteries had no place on the battlefield. In fact, the war began on a landscape from the 19th century: Oxen and horses pulled wagons, and pigeons carried handwritten messages. New technologies needed to be self-sufficient and easy to maintain if they were to be released directly onto the battlefield. So by the end of the war, the internal combustion engine, increasingly reliable and powered by cheap gasoline, was everywhere, in trucks, tanks and all manner of stationary devices.

Searching for domestic applications for these technologies, the Army wanted to know whether motor vehicles could stand a trip across the country. The convoy was an experiment — but also an advertisement. Here were the new technologies that helped win the war; now they were going to revolutionize American transportation. To do that, though, they needed public support, and especially tax dollars, to build a new infrastructure.

Slippery sand and quicksand outside North Platte, Neb., engulfed 25 trucks.

Most communities along Eisenhower’s route hosted banquets and ceremonies that celebrated the soldiers in the convoy and their own local veterans. They listened to speeches about the need for roads and infrastructure to support the new technology.

But it was not easy going. Scouts on Harley-Davidson and Indian motorcycles sped a half-hour ahead to inspect road conditions and paint arrows to guide the other vehicles. Slippery sand and quicksand outside North Platte, Neb., engulfed 25 trucks, and in Utah many were stuck once again in massive sand drifts in the desert. Pavement in California allowed the convoy to return to its top speed of 10 miles per hour. The novelty of such travel nevertheless compelled amazed participants to record their progress. Reporting from Bedford, Pa., one noted: “Roads very good. Made 57 miles in 11⅓ hours.”

The convoy reached San Francisco on Sept. 5, 1919, 62 days after leaving Washington. It crossed San Francisco Bay on two ferries and concluded with a reception in Lincoln Park that included a “band concert and street dancing.”

Eisenhower’s report to Army leaders focused on details, mostly mechanical difficulties and the condition of the patchwork of existing roads. He reported a mix of paved and unpaved roads, old bridges and narrow passages. Narrow roads caused oncoming traffic to run off the road, and the convoy’s vehicles encountered added difficulty when re-entering the roadway. Some bridges were too low for trucks to pass under. Eisenhower singled out a western section of the Lincoln Highway as being so poor that it warranted a thorough investigation before the government spent any more money on it. The report leaves larger analysis aside, but it’s clear from his attention to detail that Eisenhower was already beginning to grasp the need for a radically different infrastructure — not an improvement on what was already in place.

Eisenhower’s lessons in infrastructure continued. In the 1930s he mapped the military value of French roads in the 1930s. During World War II he studied and experienced the revolutionary German roadways. “During World War II, I had seen the superlative system of German autobahn,” he wrote, the country’s “national highways crossing that country.” Largely by chance, his military service allowed him to develop a rare global expertise on civil engineering and how it could be used to guide national development.

Early in his presidency, Eisenhower created the President’s Advisory Committee on the National Highway System, known as the Clay Committee after its chairman, retired Gen. Lucius D. Clay. The committee developed a plan to spend $50 billion of federal funds over 10 years to build a “vast system of interconnected highways.” It also warned of the need for large-scale evacuation of cities in the event of nuclear war. Eisenhower and Congress followed up with the Interstate Highway Act, and by the end of his second term the system was well on its way; eventually it would encompass 46,000 miles of road.

The hidden hand behind this new national infrastructure was inexpensive fuel. The success of Eisenhower’s vision depended on a readily available supply of the petroleum that drove Americans’ internal combustion engines. In the 1950s, it was so cheap and plentiful that even sober, long-range planning — like the Clay Committee’s — assumed it would never run out.

But as the story of Eisenhower’s convoy demonstrates, the development of a vast architecture around fossil fuels was not inevitable. Competing with other technologies, the internal combustion engine emerged victorious thanks to the support of business and military interests. This energy choice was reinforced and supported by public will, political decisions and laws like residential zoning rules. Americans determined that the 20th century would be powered by fossil fuels, and the marketplace provided them the flexibility to create a landscape of drive-throughs and filling stations.

Over the course of human history, each new energy source has marked an innovation in scale and scope. Fossil fuels allowed us to accomplish more than ever before in human history. Today, an energy transition beckons that promises not necessarily more power but a more sustainable, smarter future. In short, this revolution is not just in the sources of power; it is also in how we think about energy.

It is easy to despair at the entrenched interests lined up behind continued fossil fuel use. But one lesson of the 1919 convoy is that energy transitions do happen, and they can happen relatively quickly. For that to happen, though, we need to ask: Where is our generation’s path for the 21st century? How will we find it? And which visionary leader will guide us — as Eisenhower did, starting with his trip along the Lincoln Highway?

Brian C. Black is a distinguished professor of history and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona and the author of “Crude Reality: Petroleum in World History.”

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