Nearly three centuries of transportation history in Pennsylvania include native American paths, wagon trails, early canals and railroads, the Forbes and Burd Roads, and ten other turnpikes, but the Lincoln Highway and the Pennsylvania Turnpike were the most important in the development of this region and much of the nation. In 1913, the nation’s first cross-country highway was designated the Lincoln Highway, stretching from New York City to San Francisco as the first true highway link with the west, at a time when there were only 600,000 automobiles in the country. The Federal Highway Commission stopped naming highways in 1925 and began using a numbering system, and in Pennsylvania much of the Lincoln Highway became Route 30. As cars and trucks increased and public pressure grew for hard-surfaced highways, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission was inaugurated in 1937. On October 1, 1940 at 12:01 a.m., the first 160 miles of four-lane all-concrete highway from Carlisle to Irwin opened, with some motorists waiting days to be the first to travel on the new superhighway. In 1957, the turnpike was extended east to Philadelphia and west to the Ohio line, creating a 330-mile superhighway. Other states followed Pennsylvania’s lead in building similar four-lane paved toll roads, and the engineering challenges of crossing the Allegheny Mountains made Pennsylvania a pioneer in major road construction, first with the scenic mountain route of the Lincoln Highway and then with the tunnel construction of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.