| Interstate 50th Anniversary Facts and Figures |
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| Fun Facts |
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Constructing the Banfield Freeway (I-84) in 1957.
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- Oregon has six portions of interstate highways, I-5, I-82, I-84, I-105, I-205 and I-405.
- Oregon completed its 308-mile-long portion of I-5 to full four-lane standards by October 1966, and by March 1970 nearly 90 percent of the state’s 731 miles of interstate highway were finished.
- The last section of interstate to be completed in Oregon was I-82 near Hermiston.
- I-5 is the most important north-south truck route in Oregon, Washington and California.
- About 14,000 trucks cross the I-205 Glenn Jackson Bridge from Portland to Vancouver daily; 11,700 trucks cross the I-5 Interstate Bridge from Portland to Vancouver daily.
- The Medford Viaduct on I-5 in southern Oregon is unique to the state: it is a 3,229-foot long steel beam and girder bridge that carries the highway corridor through the middle of town as an elevated freeway rather than one at grade.
- Building the Siskiyou Pass on I-5 from Oregon to California required more than 600 workers moving 75,000 cubic feet of dirt every day.
- Trucks make up more than 45 percent of all traffic on parts of I-84 in eastern Oregon's Baker and Malheur counties.
- I-84 is the longest numbered segment of interstate within Oregon, at 375 miles. The shortest is I-405 at 4.2 miles.
- Over 1,000,000 cubic yards of dirt were excavated in downtown Portland to build I-405.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower is credited with originating the idea for the interstate highway system. Eisenhower personally witnessed the need for a national highway system in 1919, when as a lieutenant colonel in the Army he helped staff a coast-to-coast convoy of 81 military vehicles. The 1919 journey was a long and often lousy trip—62 days of heat, breakdowns, mud, bridgeless river-crossings, and rough roads. Where bridges did exist, the heavy military vehicles often broke through bridge decks. Eisenhower made the idea of an interstate highway system a keystone of his domestic agenda when he came into office in the mid-1950s. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 into law, authorizing the creation of a federally funded interstate highway system.
- The first rest area along I-5 was constructed at Oak Grove between Albany and Eugene in 1962. Its immediate popularity as a place to stop, stretch and relax in a quiet atmosphere far exceeded the wildest estimate of usage, especially by truckers. Now, Oregon has 22 strategically located rest areas along the I-5 and I -84 corridors (plus another 45 along other Oregon highways).
- The decision to build the first mall in Oregon, Portland’s Lloyd Center, was not made until construction and location of the Banfield Freeway (now I-84) was assured. Privately financed at a cost of more than $100 million when it first opened in the early 1960’s, it covered some 56 acres (to grow to more than 100). With a payroll of more than 4,000 full-time and 2,000 part-time employees, it was considered one of the largest employers in Oregon at the time.
- The Baldock Rest Area on I-5 near Wilsonville was named after the Robert “Sam” Baldock, who served as Chief Highway Engineer from March 1, 1932 to August 15, 1956. He started with the Oregon State Highway Department in 1915 as a chain man and was known as the “father of Oregon’s modern highway system.”
This material was compiled from several sources including a 2004 report entitled "The Interstate Highway System in Oregon, An Historic Overview" by George Kramer, prepared for the Oregon Department of Transportation.
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| Figures and Charts |
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Average daily traffic on Oregon's interstate highway system 1954-2004 (pdf)
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