Pennsylvania Turnpike: America's First Superhighway

On October first, nineteen forty, Pennsylvania opened a road unlike any that had existed in America before. The Pennsylvania Turnpike stretched one hundred sixty miles from Irwin, east of Pittsburgh, to Carlisle, west of Harrisburg, with no traffic lights, no grade crossings, and a divided roadway designed for high-speed travel. It was the nation's first long-distance superhighway, and this service plaza is one of the originals.

The Turnpike Commission had been created in nineteen thirty-seven, and builders took advantage of a ready-made path: the abandoned right-of-way and tunnels of the old South Pennsylvania Railroad, a line that had never been finished. By nineteen fifty-seven the Turnpike had grown to three hundred sixty miles across the state and extended one hundred ten miles north toward Scranton. The design principles it demonstrated would shape the Interstate Highway System built in the following decade.