LEARN NC

North Carolina History Digital Textbook Project

Interstate highways from the ground up

By Kristin Post

1.3 Teacher's guide: History and safety

By Kristin Post

Provided by UNC Libraries / Documenting the American South

Introduction (background on I-26)

Though it is considered “the largest single construction project in the history of the NCDOT,” the I-26 corridor in Madison County is only nine miles long. The corridor is located in Madison County, North Carolina, and connects NC-213 near Mars Hill to US-23 in Tennessee (point these out on the hand-out map, or on the map at the front of the classroom.) When North Carolina finished building this corridor, it meant that I-26, an interstate highway that stretched from Charleston, South Carolina, up to Columbus, Ohio, was completed. The reason that the nine-mile project is such a large construction project is because of the steep mountain terrain and the type of rock on which it was built. Over twenty six million cubic yards of material had to be displaced by dynamite, bulldozers, and other heavy machinery. When a 400-foot cut was made into the side of the mountain, unstable colluvium deposits were taken away and replaced by a more stable rock. Trucks had to carry all of that material away from the site, and dispose of it properly.

NCDOT resident engineer Stan Hyatt lived in Madison County most of his life, and he loved hunting and exploring the mountain when he was younger. This interstate he helped design and build meant the destruction of some of the environment where he grew up.

In the next three excerpts you are going to hear about some of the reasons behind why the interstate was built, and you’re also going to hear how Stan Hyatt feels about it. Follow along with the directions on your worksheet as I play each excerpt.

The recording

Play the History and Safety oral history excerpt. Running time: 2 minutes 38 seconds.

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Transcript

Stan Hyatt
But it’s a natural north–south corridor that’s moved commerce and people. I suspect if you went back to the history, it was an old drover’s route a hundred years ago, where people drove cattle and pigs and turkeys and things like they did down along the Buncombe turnpike, down the French Broad River. I think they probably did the same thing across Sam’s Gap, and so commerce has moved. It’s been a natural corridor for over a hundred years.

It became apparent, as these other sections were being completed on either end of Madison County back in the 70s, that this was or would be a missing link through Madison County that needed a more modern road than the old US 23 highway up Murray Mountain to Sam’s Gap.

That road was built in the mid-30s. I’m sure when they opened it up and had a ribbon-cutting back in the 30s you could just see the exubalation [slang for exuberance and exhilaration] on the faces of the people coming over the mountain from Erwin, Tennessee and going back and forth what a fantastic road they had at that time. But if you stop and look, they didn’t have tractor-trailers then. The traffic count would have probably been a few hundred people a day, and today of course we have nearly 10,000 people a day and six to seven hundred tractor-trailer rigs per day.

Rob Amberg
I didn’t realize it was that high.
Stan Hyatt
Yes, and even the bigger tractor-trailer rigs have been banned from using the road. That ban went into effect about five years ago because of the concern of the families living on Murray Mountain that were putting their school kids out there. The mothers were just terrified that a runaway truck — these big rigs — would come off the mountain and run over a loaded school bus. So, even with the ban we’re still having 500 to 700 rigs per twenty-four-hour period come off of the mountain. That road has just outlived its usefulness. Unfortunately, because of the grade of it, the terrain of it, the horizontal alignment of it, it is not possible to go in and put an easy remedy on fixing the existing road.

Follow-up questions

  1. Stan Hyatt mentions that 100 years ago, the road was a “drover’s route,” which was a path used by people who were moving their livestock from their farms to a city center to be sold or butchered. Why would humans continue to use the same general route?
  2. How much did the traffic count increase since the 1930s?
  3. What vehicles exist now that didn’t exist in 1930?
  4. What was unsafe about the old road?
  5. What were some reasons Stan Hyatt mentions why the old road couldn’t be improved?