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New Interstates Pushed Vermont To Modern Age

By CHRISTOPHER GRAFF

On a late November afternoon in 1960, more than 300 cars lined up in Montpelier for a drive to nowhere. The attraction was a newly opened section of Interstate 89. The cars drove to Middlesex, exited at the end of the six miles and returned to Montpelier on the other side of the brand new, four-lane highway.

"The scenery is marvelous," raved Arnold Pellegrini of Barre.

"It's smooth and straight," gushed Vernon Crossett of Montpelier.

That day may have taken the drivers nowhere, but it opened their eyes to the potential of a highway system that turned Vermont into someplace. It was a potential appreciated at the time. U.S. Sen. George Aiken said at the 1961 dedication of a section of Interstate 91 that paved over his boyhood home: "We're on the verge of the greatest development Vermont has ever seen."

Vermont Life, the state's promotional magazine, was equally upbeat: "These highways are not only freeing motor vehicles to serve their full economic and social potential, but are also, in inevitable consequence, expected to influence the development of the state no less significantly than the coming of the railroad."

A special legislative commission that investigated the state highway department and programs in 1963 concluded "the development of the Vermont economy is firmly linked, we are convinced, to the completion of the interstate." And no one today questions the incredible influence of the interstate system: It, more than any other single factor, transformed Vermont, by making the state accessible.

"It took us out of the sticks and put us within a day's drive of 80 million people and right in the main economic stream of the country," said Elbert Moulton, who held a variety of development posts in the state in a career that spanned several decades.

To appreciate what the interstates have done, consider this: Vermont first proposed in the 1940s that the interstate run up the western side of the state, from Bennington to Rutland, Middlebury, Burlington and St. Albans. Imagine the difference if that route had been chosen. Instead, Massachusetts and Connecticut fought to have the Vermont route run along the eastern side of the state so the highway would serve their communities of Springfield, Mass., and Hartford, Conn.

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