Anne McKee’s family liked to visit Clarkco State Park when she was a child.

The Meridian family would drive on U.S. Highway 45 for a day trip to the park.

“That was a big deal when I was a kid to get to go there,” said McKee, who was born in 1945.

The family’s visit would include a picnic. Her mother, who she called a “Southern cook,” would prepare the food.

“She would make like fried chicken and potato salad and desserts,” she said.

Before the interstate highway system was created, Mississippians like McKee’s family would take trips on U.S. highways such as U.S. Route 45 and U.S. Route 80.

Although these highways are still used, interstates such as I-20 and I-59 are now a more common way to travel.

The interstate highway system changed life for Americans in several ways.

Meridian and Lauderdale County residents say it allowed them to visit far-away destinations and made travel more efficient and safer.

At the same time, though, they look back fondly on shorter trips they took to Meridian and other destinations in East Mississippi before the interstate was created.

Traveling before the interstate

Norman Coleman, a Marion resident born in 1953, remembers going to downtown Meridian as a child.

“I loved it,” he said.

He would tag along with his mother on trips to Winn-Dixie.

For Coleman, visiting Meridian felt like going to a big city.

“It was like living in Meridian now and going to New York or D.C. or something,” he said. “It was that much different.”

Maxey Baucum, who lives near Collinsville but grew up in Chunky, said that people often traveled by bus when he was a child in the early 1950s. He and his mother would take a bus on U.S. Highway 80 from Chunky to Meridian to go Christmas shopping.

He and his friends would also take the bus to Meridian to go to the Temple Theatre.

“We’d … catch a bus and go to the show,” he said, “and then get on it (the bus) and come back home.”

U.S. Highway 80 became “more dangerous and more dangerous” over the years, Baucum said. He explained that the highway had become crowded, as people were buying more cars and traveling more often.

Baucum said there were fatal accidents on the U.S. Highway 80 bridges that went over the Chunky River. He said the interstate was safer than the old highway.

The construction of the interstate

Construction on the interstate highway system began in 1956, the year Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower thought the interstate highway system would decrease congestion on roads, lower the number of people killed in highway accidents, provide jobs for many people and have other impacts, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

The resulting system made it easier for Americans to drive from Meridian to New Orleans and from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Baucum, who worked on the interstate as a draftsman, said the stretch of the interstate between what is now Bonita Lakes and Kewanee was open by 1960. The section of the interstate from Newton to 65th Avenue in Meridian — which is near the Queen City Truck Stop — was completed in approximately 1965, he said. The stretch from 65th Avenue to Bonita Lakes was built from approximately 1965 to 1970.

Jim Hobgood, who grew up in Marion but now lives in DeKalb, worked on the construction of the interstate in Lauderdale County in the summers of 1965 and 1966. He played several roles, including as a dirt inspector and as a rodman, which is a member of a surveying crew who holds a pole.

Hobgood said the weather was hot while they worked on the interstate.

“Mosquitoes were out where we were,” he said.

Life after the interstate was completed

Tammy Ingram, a historian at the College of Charleston, said that the creation of the interstate highway system made long-distance travel faster and safer. Hobgood also sees the interstate as having made travel more efficient.

“Overall, it improved the quality of life,” Hobgood said. “It took the traffic away from the towns and put them out in the countryside.”

Ingram said the interstate also made traveling in the South safer for people of color, as those travelers could pass through areas without stopping.

“It was safer if you’re having to pass through a place where you might not necessarily feel welcome,” she said, “or you might be subjected to segregated bathrooms and restaurants and hotels and that sort of thing.”

The interstate also made it easier for families to travel to far-flung places.

“The interstate really allowed my family to travel all over,” said Greg Hatcher, who grew up in both Meridian and Lauderdale County. “I mean we traveled quite a bit in my teens.”

Hatcher, who was born in 1960, traveled with his family to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. And in the summer of 1976, they drove in a van to Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore.

McKee’s family took the interstate to Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. 

“We stayed in a little mom and pop motel — of course they all were then,” she said.

Ingram said a lot of towns in the South opposed the building of the interstate, but she doesn’t know if this was the case in Meridian. Locals, especially small business owners, in some Southern towns were concerned about how interstate highways often bypassed downtowns.

“They knew that it was going to be detrimental to a lot of local businesses,” she said.

Coleman said some people in Meridian opposed the interstate, while others were glad to see it. He said that once the interstate opened in Meridian, businesses started to develop along the road. He believes that the interstate helps the city.

“Because we wouldn’t be probably surviving as well as we are,” he said, “if it wasn’t for the interstate. … I’m just glad that it happened.”