To people younger than 65, it probably seems like the Massachusetts Turnpike, or the Mass Pike, as it is commonly known, has always been there to move cars and trucks from one end of the state to the other.
As a young child, I recall my dad telling my sisters and I how difficult a project it was, since crews had to blast enormous hills made of solid granite to keep the highway from having too many ups and downs. Those long vertical lines running up and down the rocky embankment, were the drill tubes into which the dynamite was dropped. That all seems taken for granted now.
A vintage documentary on the construction of the pike popped up in my youtube feed the other night. It's lengthy, thorough and fascinating. I think the biggest surprise for me was how risky were the practices back then. Footage of enormous slabs of rock being dropped into a dump truck bed didn't seem real, or....legal? In fact, several men died constructing the highway.
Check out the shots of the road, newly completed and in use. Where is everybody? Could the planners of the 1950s ever envision the volume of traffic we'd see on that highway now? In 2020, it took a pandemic to reduce traffic to the level of volume that was commonplace 65 years ago.
The next time you travel the Mass Pike, consider the sacrifice in lives, and the engineering that made this artery possible today. And don't forget to exit! Today, I-90 begins in Boston and ends in Seattle, Washington, the longest of the interstate highways, according to Wikipedia. That is one, long road.
Enjoy the video