The Turnpike That Opened Without a Speed Limit

On the first of October, nineteen forty, you could drive onto a road in Pennsylvania and go as fast as your car was physically capable of going, and the state police would not stop you. That is not a figure of speech. There was a posted number. A week before the highway opened, the commission announced a fifty mile an hour limit, and then everybody involved simply agreed to disregard it. Drivers ignored it. So did the troopers. If you pulled up to a toll booth and asked the attendant what the speed limit was, the answer you got was two words. Drive carefully. For six and a half months, that was the policy on America's first superhighway. What ended it is not what you would guess. LOCATIONS FROM THIS VIDEO: Twelve-mile straightaway east of the Blue Mountain Tunnel: 40.19278, -77.60000 Blue Mountain Tunnel, eastern portal: 40.19472, -77.68194 Site of the first Turnpike fatality, approximately 1.5 miles west of Donegal Interchange: 40.11667, -79.41667 Irwin Interchange, western terminus of the original 1940 Turnpike, mile 0: 40.32444, -79.71222 Carlisle Interchange, eastern end of the original 1940 alignment: 40.20889, -77.13889