East-west Interstates with Major Cities:

I-10: Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Mobile, New Orleans,
         Baton Rouge, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Phoenix,
         Los Angeles, Santa Monica).

I-40: Wilmington, Raleigh-Durham, Knoxville, Nashville,
         Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo,
         Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Needles, Barstow).

I-80: New York, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Des Moines,
         Omaha, Salt Lake City, Reno, San Francisco).

"How can we NOT select I-40 as the top east-west Interstate. It's the only one that includes large pieces of Route 66, arguably the single most famous American highway?"

"Sure I-10 has interesting parts, but there are huge expanses of desert, not to mention endless swamps and near-swamps across the South. B-o-r-i-n-g."

"You want to talk history? Then don't forget that I-80 includes the first 'interstate': the old Pennsylvania Turnpike."

"I'll grant you I-40 is pretty nice through the Great Smoky Mountains, but otherwise you're mostly dealing with forests to the east and desert to the west."

"What more could you want than the fact that New Orleans, San Antonio, and L.A. lie on the same road, with Santa Monica as a very unlikely punctuation mark at the end. I-10 has to be the greatest."

"I-80 across Wyoming is as close as you'll come to what it'd be like to drive in Tibet. You feel you're on the roof of the world. The sky is that darker blue you only get at higher elevations. No trees, with barren rockiness spreading to distant purple mountains. Not only that, once I was driving 80 mph west of Laramie and I was PASSED like I was standing still by not one but TWO schoolbuses full of children."

North-south Interstates with Major Cities

I-5: Tijuana, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose,
       Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver).

I-15: San Diego, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City,
         Pocatello, Butte, Helena).

I-35: Laredo, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth,
         Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas City, Des Moines,
         Minneapolis-St. Paul, Duluth).

I-75: Ft. Meyers, Tampa, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Knoxville,
         Lexington, Dayton, Toledo, Detriot, Flint, Mackinac,
         Sault Ste. Marie).

I-95: Key West, Miami, Cape Canaveral, Jacksonville,
         Savannah, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore,
         Philadelphia, Newark, New York, Boston, Bangor,
         New Brunswick).

"No other highway includes such a cultural cross-section of America as I-35. No matter that the scenery is zilch. There's no doubt about it, the great American heartland is also the great American flatland. But where else can you go from Hispanic to hi-tech to cowboy to farmer to Scandinavian?"

"I-5 is yin-yang. The stretch from Bakersfield to San Jose through the San Joaquin Valley is mostly semi-irrigated desert, but then the Sacramento Valley, if they've had enough rain, can look and smell like the paradise that California used to be."

"Yeah, but then you hit Oregon on I-5. Best lock your doors and zip on through. The only other people as sanctimonious and unwelcoming about their homeland are natives of Iceland. And no sooner do you get through Oregon than you have to deal with Seattle, whose affluent sanctimony is tinged an ugly dollar-bill green. Lots of luck."

"We're talking America here, right? There's one city that is so uniquely American that its presence on an Interstate surely makes that Interstate the automatic winner. I don't mean New York. I don't mean San Francisco. I-15 has to be the winner simply because it goes through Las Vegas."

The discussion went on and on. After many hours, we polled the participants. Each person wrote the names of the various routes in order of preference. We tallied results thus: A highway in first place got 8 points, second got 6, then 4, 2, and 1.

The Winners >>

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