U.S. Route 70 - History

History

Most or all of the present route designated as U.S. Highway 70 was earlier known as Lee Highway. During the earliest days of the automobile, and earlier, American highways were disorganized affairs of widely varying quality. Highways were known by a bewildering variety of names which typically changed at each town. And they were only named, not numbered.

During the 1920s the first national highway was conceived: the Lincoln Highway, named in honor of Abraham Lincoln, stretching across the northern United States from coast to coast. A companion effort was launched to create a transcontinental highway stretching across the southern half of the country, this one named in honor of the greatest general of the Confederate States of America, Robert E. Lee. The two highways were a revolution of sorts, in that a driver could follow a single road from coast to coast bearing the same designation. Much of today's U.S. 70 was earlier the Lee Highway, although that appellation was later dropped.

Originally U.S. Highway 70 reached downtown Los Angeles even though it was concurrent with U.S Route 99 and/or U.S. Highway 60 throughout its course west of Globe, Arizona. Beginning in 1964 it was decommissioned in favor of Interstate 10 or US 60.

Bruce Springsteen's 1975 song, "Thunder Road" immortalizes the 1958 Robert Mitchum film, Thunder Road about a family of anarchistic moonshiners who engage in run-ins with the police. The Mitchum film is based on a real life incident in which a moonshiner perishes on the road while on the run from the police.