Urban Legends

Highway Landing Zones

The Legend

The United States' interstate highway system was designed in such a way that roads could be used as emergency airstrips in times of war.

Behind the Legend

Behind the legend: In 1956, the United States Congress added funding for emergency military landing strips to the Federal Highway-Aid Act and, as a cost-saving measure, indicated that landing strips and interstate highways were to occupy the same parcels of land. To comply with this act, the highway department indicated that every fifth mile of interstate highway would be perfectly straight.

Some years later, when the enormous task of completing the new highway system was complete, military strategists brought to Congress' attention the fact that the preponderance of handy landing sites would prove very convenient for an invading army. This led to additional federal funding for overpasses and power lines across the straight stretches of highway, and the building of tall, solid medians that effectively cut the "landing strip" widths in half. It was also decided that future repairs and resurfacing of the highway would be done with regular asphalt instead of the more expensive landing-strip appropriate material.

It is interesting to note that in the 1950s Congress passed a number of additional laws that provided for dual use of public buildings. Department of Motor Vehicles offices are designed to double as morgues, post offices can be quickly repurposed as ammo dumps, and schools (until the early 1990s) were required to have on hand re-education materials to be used train children to be happy and subservient during long periods of martial law.

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