There's nothing an ancient, long dead civilization likes so much as leaving behind a towering feat of engineering. The Pyramids at Giza, Machu Pichu, the Acropolis, the Great Wall. Mighty empires build mighty, hard-to-knock-down monuments. The United States is no exception, but our mighty structure does not stretch up into the sky but out toward the horizon, along the ground.

The Interstate highway system is a massive testament to America's priorities and ideals. Not to mention the country's production capabilities after World War II. The Interstate is laid out neatly across an entire continent in unprecedentedly organized fashion. Its taxonomy is as neat and official as such a massive undertaking suggests. Where other federally funded transportation initiatives had been found unconstitutional, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 thrived.

There are a few other candidates to the title of American Wonder of the World. The Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building leap to mind but both are dwarfed by the size and the impact of the mighty Interstate. Like all great monuments it took decades to complete, officially deemed finished in 1991, at a cost of $114 billion. It covers nearly 47,000 miles. It is at the heart of America's day-to-day life, the spine of the country during its most prosperous and powerful years.

The Great Wall was a defensive measure that stretched across a great nation and on that practical level the big American road is its successor. The Interstate's official name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The Interstate is an assurance that if America is ever invaded, it will be able to mobilize and defend itself. It is also intended as a huge evacuation route in the event of nuclear attack.

But the Great Wall's practicality is the exception. Lost civilization's ruins were more often temples, religious in nature. Likewise, the Interstate is a testament to many of America's own beliefs. It is a temple to the America god of commerce. The entire country is laced with the asphalt arteries that gave life to our current, automobile-centric economic model. The Interstate meant the death of the railroads and, as David Halberstam makes clear in his book The Fifties, was a crucial link in the chain-ing of the service industry.

Today, traveling the country is a homogenous experience. John Steinbeck wrote that when freeways connected America it would "be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing." The intimate coast of Maine will give way to the majesty of the Rockies but the human architecture from A to B will be consistent. Golden Arches from sea to shining sea. Which is the point. The early travelers of the Interstate wanted consistency. They did not want to roll the dice on motels every night. Give them something predictable and clean. Give them Holiday Inn. Give them Wendy's and Jack-in-the-Box and McDonald's and Burger King and Dunkin Donuts and Honeydew and Krispy Kreme and Cinnabon. Give them Mobil and BP and Chevron. Give them a known commodity.

The Interstate has made the United States a nation of automobiles and the reigning architectural motif of the nation has the big road's prints all over it. One story buildings with plenty of pavement out front. This is what America looks like from the road, and in many cities as well. We have a lot of land and the Interstate allows us to stretch out and use it.

If you enter the temple of consumerism from the other side, the Interstate embodies something more honorable as well. As unpleasant as the flat, plastic architecture of the country is, it is a byproduct not only of our consumer structure but also of our prized independence. The Interstate allows Americans to do what they've been itching to do. The United States is a vast place and it takes a feat of engineering like the Interstate to make it instantly navigable. The freedom of the big road is undeniable. We can climb into our personal automobiles and rip across state after state, in search of whatever it is we think we need. In its hugeness the Interstate is an answer to this huge nation and its huge appetite for movement. Leaving aside the fuels we burn to cross the Interstate and the instant-gratification of big parking lots and wide lanes, the big road lets us take in our country at a shot, fast, alone, and without a lot of fanfare; just the way we like it.

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