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Crazy to think that when taking the year it was done, and the ages of some of the workers, I guarantee their grandfathers fought in the civil war

Amazing that the pike was completed in less than two years!

last month I drove this road and I have to say it is outdated and it's clear that they have NO plans to make it a modern road, just continue maintenance while reducing lanes to do so, thus making it worse than it is. The guy said "relax", HOLY Toledo you have to be a white knuckle driver to do this road. I am a retired civil engineer and without doubt this road was NOT designed well and is outdated. I see no hope other than car and trucks being driving themselves because most people clearly don't have the skills or ability to do it with the volume of traffic today.

Those were great times back then . I miss the old days when Howard Johnson's was around, even though it wasn't the best food, it was always comforting to know they had food.. especially my orange sherbert. LOL

Ugh. Pains me to see all those old farms destroyed like that, especially knowing that almost all of them are gone now in that area. Quitea few farm houses, but very few barns. At least a lot of the barns still exist in my state although the farms are gone and more of them are lost though decay every year. And when they say "too old to be worth moving" they probably mean more than 100 years old, which is just sad to me. And when they say that "vandals" attacked e construction equipment that suggests to me that not all the displaced people were very happy with the project. Thats not idle vandalism he's describing, that's a serious attempt at disruption and protest.

27:32 Bridge over the Westfield

15:14 mountain blasting on the Westfield River

Once Eisenhower saw the Autobahn in Germany...he new America needed the same thing. The Pike was just one of those projects.

that lady did not get fair market value

How fascinating! My parents were married May 11, 1957 and stopped in Lee on their way to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. They just missed the opening of the Turnpike. I wonder if they traveled it on the way back?

What happened America, all those companies now overseas. Made in Ireland, America, Great Britain and even Germany gone. Its time we stopped buying cheap oriental crap.

That would be an inter generational project in good old Ireland. 10 years talking about it, 20 years in the planning stage, 20 years building it, at this stage they would realized the should have made it 6 lanes instead of 4. Add an extra 5 years of traffic mayhem while they have to widen the road and all the bridges. Am I joking sadly no its called the M50 Dublin's ring road. Cost no one rely knows. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M50_motorway_(Ireland)

My friends an I years ago used to joke about the difficulties of navigating around downtown Boston...We would say"Jesus christ if you aint careful what lane your in before you know it you're on the pike headed west when all you wanted to do was turn around"...lol..

34:07 Buffalo Springfield

Was. . development of Towns and the Greatest Natural.

Large scale projects are always good. However welcome to the 21st century. The red tape just ends it.

As seen at 6:36, moving the cows in Not Progress.

37:35 onwards: Can't help be impressed by the optimistic, forward-looking narrative of this film - reflecting the feeling of the post-war years! 🏭👍

37:39 The Carling (Black Label) brewery was a landmark next to Rt. 9 for decades. Nice to see it mentioned here.

Looks like 495 when it was first opened. Now it can become a parking lot. I remember route 9 as a baby. Thanks.

I wonder how many of these men are still alive today...

This road, so grandly and heroically built, is now a crappy, rutted, slow highway from the NY state line to the I-84 interchange at Sturbridge, then a constantly congested mess all the way to Boston. The gargantuan amounts of graft and mismanagement by state agencies involved in the Mass Pike's upkeep has caused one of the greatest roadblocks to expanding commerce in Massachusetts history, and relief is not in sight at all. Just sickening.

The way things work in Taxxachusetts today means that such a project either couldnt/wouldn't get made in budget or on deadline.. It would probably take 10 years to build today.. Look at the Big Dig project that was to originally take about 15-17y. and $2.5 billion butttt... You guessed it. It took 25years and costs ballooned to almost $15 billion so it was about 10y late and way over budget by more then $12 billion. This is almost always how things work when the Fed and unions work together.. It was LITTERLY a job one could start and retire when the job was finished..

Carters drive 55' nonsense back in the seventies. The Democrats were already well on their way to becoming the control freaks they are now!

The Turnpike hat with an arrow through it. An open, honest, even humorous poke at our state's history. Removed by the p.c. intolerant liberal left thought control crowd who runs things now. Humorless. Joyless big brother. They even have Cameras watching you every mile you drive the pike.

All the cars, trucks...everything you see in this film....made in America. People actually wonder where the good times went? We were sold out. Clinton's Democratic N.A.F.T.A. deal with Asia was the beginning of the end of American industry. I don't think the people in this film would have stood for it!

Howard Johnson's restaurants. They were great. Good food fast in a nice family sit down atmosphere. My wife worked at the one in Lee as a teenager in the early eighties. She loved it. Awesome tips. She would bring home several hundred dollars a night...back then! "You rarely ever met the same people again, and they tipped well."

Savage Arms in Westfield, If I remember right. . That giant, really cool round steel sign of the Indian chief logo, his feathered head dress flowing down behind him, a beautiful, rusting highway icon. I think it was mounted on a water tower. The ancient brick factory flying by with it.

The giant landfill just outside of Springfield. Paper....plastic...not sure what that was...in the trees...everywhere...and the smell. "Nope.....that's not Monsanto''' It's the landfill. When they finally closed and capped it off, all you could think of was you were passing by an Everest of garbage. Archeologists ten thousand years from now will be digging down into it and finding....piles of 1968 Playboy magazines! They will think, "All the girls back then liked to walk around naked, I guess"

Who doesn't remember driving by the Monsanto plant! Even at night, you knew exactly where you were...by the smell. I always marveled anyone could actually put up with living, working anywhere within miles of that horrible smell. They should never have located those plants in such urban states. It smelled just like a can of paint...yikes! "Who the heck would choose to work there" always crossed my mind! Nuts!

Welcome to "Taxachusetts" should be the welcome on those boarder signs. I wish I could have lived back in the times they showed in this film. They really have totally and completely screwed this once great state up beyond all recognition.

I remember hearing a story about the Westfield bridge part of the pike. The road was built before the bridge, and teenagers liked to drag race at night, playing chicken and seeing who could come closest and stopping before going over the several hundred-foot fall into the valley far below. Eventually, an unlucky daredevil did plunge to his death, soaring out over the unfinished drop-off. I heard the story from an older guy who was a teenager himself at the time. Swears it was true. Big legend back in the day, now forgotten, he says.

I miss the old toll booths and question losing them. It has not gotten any cheaper going automated and frequent billing errors and having to keep up with the nuisance of an electronic pass stinks, plus they don't interconnect with other state highways. It was so much simpler and nicer to just stop, say hello to the friendly toll keeper and go on your way. They were good paying jobs and the whole system worked great for everyone. No one asked the public how we felt about it, of course. I don't know anyone who ever had a problem with those toll booths in operation.

Driving sections of the old roads in western mass where I live makes me shake my head, anyone could even question the wisdom of building this road. The thought of modern traffic trying to navigate those narrow, twisty roads full of intersections and stop light would be impossible now. They not only did the right thing...they did it exactly right. I ride the pike constantly and always marvel at the brilliance of pushing this beautiful, wide road through such a congested old state, settled and built hundreds of years ago. Eternal and grateful thanks for a job well done. It's too bad the state is now run by liberal Democrats today! The "can do" spirit that made this road possible is a thing of the past in this bureaucratic nightmare, where it routinely costs twice as much to build a mile of road than in any other part of the country. Corruption and little common sense are now the norm here.

4:20 Surprising to see those trucks following so closely, esp the 1930s-looking one 2nd from front. Driver focus might've been higher back then, but brake and tire performance sure wasn't.

It is impossible to imagine a reason --- any reason --- to cheer for the creation of something that made it easier for thousands of Massh*les to be able to drive more swiftly into Maine, NY, CT, VT, NH and RH. Perhaps a commercial LSD distributor had something to do with the inspiration that led to the creation of this video.

Now what the country needs is a high-speed rail system going 400 MPH coast to coast and border to border.

no gps no heated seats no power windows no cellphones no automatic wipers no power gate assist no cruise control no tailgates that folds like a knife no aluminum truck boxes no heated steering wheels or seats no ac no 8 cylinder to 4 cylinder garbage no telling how its cold outside temp stupid gauge yes you know back when a truck or car had a carburetor a cigarette lighter two lights up front and simple back lights in the rear and basic wipers turn signal and no seat belts yes when you could afford a vehicle and fix it yourself for the most part yourself

They took my grandmothers house by eminent domain .I can remember seeing them digging up the backyard with a bulldozer the house was next lol .I want my house back at least give me some of the toll money lol

America ... At least, those in this video seem so civilised back then. No MAGA caps. Clean shaven. No scraggy beards, or greasy hair. This type of work would be a magnet for the that type P

Just imagine the gold and other things they got from that

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“Towns were bypassed,” and they subsequently became ghost towns.

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

How many workers died?

The world's safest amd most curious driver.... the truck driver..... !!!!! Thank you to all truckers past and present!!!

Not just this project, but the entire interstate system was a feat of every challenge you can come up with. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is even more impressive. This is what built America.

I quote my fathers famous words, “oh god, I hate the mass pike” 😂😂

I hate that highways like this cut through homesteads and Virgin land forever altering the landscape fragmenting large parcels of land and adding noise pollution for anyone who lives nearby.

Interesting how this video completely ignores the fact that Boston, Albany, and Chicago had already been well-connected by even more efficient rail for 100 years before the Pike was opened and then served to help in rail's demise.