i want to get started with that. it is a book that sean mentioned. i will be drawing material from it tonight. the history of recreational development in colorado after world war ii. -- mostly focuses on 1942-1945 all stop how the southern rockies in a few decades went from a remote and a skewer backwater to one of the most heavily visited vacation destinations in the united states. one question we ask in the book is how did the country come to be a vacation land all stop much more broadly, the book is an effort to examine bigger issues. it goes way beyond the high country. whennt to figure out how tourers and became such a big business in the decades after world war ii, and america began to seek out its landscape like colorado high country for leisure and personal fulfillment and pleasure, and when they got into the way these landscapes were being marketed. what implications did all of that have for america. environment, nature. people want to consume recreational landscape of stop what consequences the deck area for americans in terms of politics, environment, and culture? they ruminate on the environmental consequences. consumptions of have shaped the lands, but how they have changed our minds. in terms of teaching us without realizing it. i thought i would give you a taste of the book tonight. my book is focused on the center piece of history. interstatenating in 70. i will pull up interstate 70 on this map. the high country is a vaguely defined term. areasit to focus on the west of denver that could have been i did become the interstate corridor. that may be a weird way of putting it. by focusing on the first section of interstate-70 stop that is the four-lane bypass. and around the old mining town of colorado springs. that was something that state highway officials were eager to do all stop by the 1950's, it had become a notorious bopper traffic stop the highways west of denver were forced together in this narrow valley. they were forced to go right through the middle of town. half the cafés and the motels. people were going on and off the road will stop it was down to the point where it began known as the turtle room will stop it was known as one of the most congested stretches of highway. they were determined to build a four-lane bypass. that was on the mountainside. the construction began in late 1957. the bypass was almost completed. lede highway officials local business owners on a tour of the new road will stop they were pretty excited about this modern road. it had sweeping four lanes and control access on and off ramps. then they got up there on the bypass. they looked down at the town and they were completely horrified withat they saw all stop the old route they showed you before, with the highway running right through the middle of town, businesses have learned to attract words -- taurus -- to urists by sprucing up the fronts. flowers.ts had from the bypass, they found themselves looking down on the town may different aspect of. -- perspective. it was not a pretty sight. backs ofwould see the the houses which were on painted and kyle high with old junk. it looked like a ghost town in the process of the cane. it was not a good first impression. for small-town business owners trying to capitalize on the postwar automobile vacation industry, it was no longer going to be enough to put some windows. now they would have to take a tourist's view of the county consider what landscape would be needed. they wanted to attract vacationers and compete with other communities that were trying to do these aim thing will stop in short, with this for stretch of i-70 to be built in the high country, we can see how large-scale postwar tour some was going to change people's use of the land. the way they related to place and the ways they took care of it. i will dive into the story as a condensed urgent of the story i tell in "vacationland." the high country seem like a great place for vacation. that would be fundamentally changing how people saw the region will stop if that sounds --lly -- we are to you, that if that sounds weird to you, keep in mind that they had a large population. it was a region of extreme rugged conditions and daunting to lockerbie -- topography. it is not the kind of place most people would take a vacation. there was towards them in colorado in the late 19th century. you might know that they gained a reputation as the switzerland of america will stop there were people coming to railroad resorts and to mineral spa they were taking the scenic excursions. the key thing to keep in mind for the purposes of our story tonight is that for the most part, very few of these taurus were venturing deep into the high country. they were not spending very long there. they were not lingering all stop this middle part of the state, it went to denver. area with very little visibility in the united date. i slain how many different groups lived in their own ways to change these impressions. officials andnd agenciesons and state antistate publicity bureau and interest groups and recreational enthusiasts. the years, mt. climbers, fly fishers. all of them were working together -- at the same time in their own ways to improve his impression of colorado high country. byy started doing this trying to fashion a vacation friendly image. they did this by using graphics and colorful images. my claim is not that they were doing anything original stop they were whirling stock in trade of modern advertising. ,he emotional feel any catchy memorable slogans. photographs, these brightly colored photographs. they were extremely formulaic and clichéd. they showed similar views of high country meadows and alpine lakes. of craggy, snow-covered peaks. again and again and again. they were reproduced over and over. they were on, brochures, magazine articles. they became a low lows for colorado tourism. they were instantly recognizable. the cover of my book is, a scenic clichéd stop at the same time, all of these different groups of people were working at the same time for their own purposes. they were working to develop tourist friendly infrastructures. they wanted to build up the taurus infrastructures. that included motels to resort. and mechanical chairlifts, which were very rare will stop they came to dominate the landscape after world war ii. example of what i mean by packaging the land. it served to make recreation easier, more convenient, more comfortable will stop a few taurus newfound interest to wild stop if youe will think about it, that is with the listed. the infrastructure served to physically package he high country for larger numbers of taurus. the single most important way of patching high country was to link those landscapes to a network of modern highways. aned highways had extraordinary effect on the flow of taurus. american tourists were overwhelmingly traveling by car , theyespite the freedom were overwhelmingly combined to paved roads. there was a saying that taurus will drive 100 miles of their way to avoid 5000 to road. at a time when many rural roads in colorado were still there were gravel, local boosters lobbied for highway improvements. delegationslocal would make this ritual trip to denver to bow down before the state highway commission and present their wish list of projects. improvements that they wanted funded. if you read the reference, you discover that the explanation these local delegations gave for why they wanted highway improvement was because they wanted to foster towards him. before i move on, let me back up to talk about what the highway geography of the high country was like. war, this is what i have highlighted weirdly. as you can see, it did not take a direct route will stop it took sort of a crooked route before heading off to utah. did this to skirt the highest mountain ranges and take advantage of river valleys will stop by contrast, the route west of denver, where i 70 runs did not exist. it simply did not exist. is howm trying to show he wanted to get from denver to either of the counties directly -- summit county is 55 miles last will stop back in that time, to get to summit county, you had to drive 100 miles. you had to get over a couple of passes. freemont past before you drop down. to get to the eagle county, which is 70 miles away, you have to drive 170 miles. you had to go through several very high pass -- then you would get dumped down into the eagle valley. reason for this they deflected highway routes to the north and south. rather than letting them cut directly west. this picture is interesting. it is a picture of the valley. this is where it is located will that what would become interstate 70 was a gravel road. wall. an impassable topography is an obvious reason why these counties were so remote and why there is no direct route. it was also a history. they were mining counties. they were never as big a deal as some of the other mining counties. railroads built their way back and they built into the high country, they go to these most prosperous mining towns. they did not race to get to these other counties. when the first road builders came along, often they would start by following the railroad routes. they did not emphasize eagle or summit county. it was a matter of adopting topography and historical precedent. map, this ist this from 1925 was the did you look at this map, you'll see hardly any hand of the future path of i-70. there is no hint. imagine this is a reminder that there is nothing natural. the interstate highway would transcend the high country. precursor was hatched in the 1920's for highway that was more western recchi west of denver. it was called the holy cross trail all stop it was hatched by it was aer editor stop depressed and stagnated area. withped that having a road help them boom again as a tourist destination stop he had a scenic desire to see it stop the highway department never applies. they never provided a -- any funding will stop the began bypassing those roads that i saw before. south fromward the the southern tips. they started trying to cut those loops out all stop they wanted to bypass them. there are examples of this will stop the map i just showed you is on the top will stop this what it looked like by 1937 stop there was a dirt road bill. -- built. then, there was a pass in 1940. a paved road. it was a public works project will stop by the time you get to the bottom half, you can start to see the precedent emerging or interstate seven. there was still nothing historical about it. route, i will go to this. it was directly west and became part of highway six. still the major route to the high country. many more stretches were just gravel order will stop it was less promoted and less traveled. the boosters became desperate to generate more tourist traffic. they try to desperate measures. in 1956, they created an attractive ran for the route by giving it a cartoon mascot will stop this is what they came up with. ridiculous sydney six. this brochure, which i found i don't want on ebay, it had sydney six frolicking along and enjoying all the recreational delights. they urged him to follow in his path. it was sad. it is amateurish and clownish. it showed how desperate they were to generate interest and brand-name recognition. little traveled route. this is proof that no matter was involved,us advertising does not always work. this flop. he never appeared again. they were engaged in a desperate effort to get their highway designated on the interstate highway. interstate, would have the power to attract and channel taurus in enormous numbers. it would have the power to make this part of the high country 1956, vacation stop in this effort to get the interstate highway designation seemed doomed. that was because of plans for the highway system nationwide , there was not even going to be an interstate ruby rockies. if you look at this map, it is one of the earliest areas -- ideas of what the system might look like. 1939, if you look at that, you see an interstate snaking through the planes. it is stopping. mapfinal interstate highway in 1947, that was the same exact thing you stop it dead ends in denver. the obvious reason was the high ranges of the high country stop they had always seemed like walls in the way of east-west travel. it is the same reason the transcontinental railroad had shunned colorado. now, the planners of the interstate system were planning the biggest public works project in history and they were planning to shun the high country. once again, we see that there is nothing natural or historically inevitable about the highway through the high country. we see that all historical precedent weight against it. once again, i should mention that it was more than just simple topography. to be honest, closed for highway engineers were daunted by any topography -- were not daunted by any topography at all. they thought they could conquer any landscape. there were even proposals to use nuclear detonation. they would use that to clear mountains away. these were not people who were daunted by topography. but in this case, they calculated that there simply was not a utilitarian rationale. there was no cost benefit that justified lasting an interstate through this topography. there were not enough people in the high country. there was not enough economic activity. highway planners and engineers taught them to build major was existing there demand. they were not creating demand. is a major problem. interstate toe stimulate economic growth. they wanted to stimulate tourism. putting an interstate through the high country, they recognize that it would put the high country through the mainline. there would be automobile dependence. somehow, they had to get these stubborn federal highway plans to work. governor edwin johnson took the lead on this. i took a buffoonish picture of them because he was a buffoonish man. he was an important political heor, but largely forgotten. was the most important political figure in the decade-long political career. he went to washington for terms in the u.s. senate. they returned to colorado for a swansong as governor in 1955. challenge ofward selling the boosting scheme by somehow not making it seem like a tourist scheme. he had to persuade federal officials that building these highways did make engineering and utilitarian sense. details,t go into because it would get too long. but he mostly made the case that the high country contains minerals and natural resources that were crucial to national security and the economy. there should be an interstate to get them out of there. case, hen engineering hatched a wildly audacious idea. bills understate the continental divide. to dispatch this idea that the high rockies were impenetrable. hecolorado built a tunnel, was convinced that federal planners would see the engineering problems eliminated. they would approve the interstate. the tunnel proposal set off an absolute firestorm of controversy. some people really excited by the idea. others were not. depending and where the tunnel alonggo, business owners u.s. six love the idea of building a tunnel that would channel traffic along u.s. six. but they hated the idea of building a tunnel that would channel traffic along u.s. 40. they sought the other way around. the mysterious criticism of the tunnel proposal came from those who felt that the tunnel would be too expensive for too little benefit. they made that cost benefit utilitarian calculation will stop the chief engineer of the highway department at the time. he proved especially skeptical. there he is on the left. he cited engineering studies that show that the kind of tunnel he was proposing would only slightly reduce the altitude. he responded with absolute fury. again leashed his supporters and attacked his opponent as a scrawny, pencil neck. he said that he hid behind calculations and statistics. he avoided doing a real man's job of taking on the mound with a high near did. the language did portray have in this unmanly way. he was not overly charismatic. he finally got the state highway department to approve the project. they signed off on the idea. they said, where's the money going to come from? will this give us an interstate? are they going to give us an interstate? the proposal would still have to go through congress and the federal highway technocracy. congress did approve a 1000 mile expansion of the interstate system. the question is, where were to maketra mile to go? a long story short, after coloradoit out, boosters finally got what they wanted in october 1950 70 stop the federal highway planners allotted 500 miles to allow the interstate to be extended west to the colorado high country will stop some of you may have heard it said that president eisenhower ordered this extension because of his love of the high country post there is no question if you think reagan vacationer in colorado. he was a frequent vacationer in colorado will stop especially at the guest ranch of his good friend, the denver real estate broker. you may have heard a story. he threw his weight behind. trip to theannual mound more convenient. the historical record does not verify that colorful story. i did find that they had to feel pretty shamelessly to appeal to letterse would write saying, you must know how much traffic there is. when it be great if there was a multilane interstate. i did not find any evidence that he was receptive to be appeals. they were repeatably rushing johnson off. i found him refusing to use his personal friendship of eisenhower for political purposes. i should also point out one other thing. extensions was finally approved in 1957. eisenhower was no longer vacationing in the high country. he suffered a heart attack in denver. he went through very long convalescence. doctorsg that, his banned him from vacationing at altitude again oh stop the idea that he approved the interstate for selfish reasons is sadly one of those colorful colorado mets. myths. it appears that the single most decisive factor in these decisions to capitulate and to extend the interstate through the high country turned out to be not any of the arguments they had made. decision thaty's they wanted a direct route for defense purposes. why theped explain interstate planners granted this extension, they surprised everybody. by not having a go from denver to salt lake, it went from denver to a point in southern utah. no one had even heard of that. even utah officials said, we did not ask for this. federal planners were angling i-70 down to hit interstate i-15. there was a desire for a quick route from denver to los angeles will stop there are probably more sources to look at. it appears from the sources i was able to find that that was the most important deciding factor. the announcement that colorado was getting its interstate was cause for jubilation stop colorado felt sure that this would bring more tourism. it was still to be decided where the new interstate would go stop federal planners had only 60 endpoints. -- fixed the endpoints. how would he from point a to point b? this was a cause for debate in colorado. -- varies groups had different arguments for their route. a make a long story short, technocratic governor called in a new york engineering firm to study the possible routes and decide from an expert engineering perspective. this firm studied no fewer than eight possible routes, including seven different proposed tunnel sites will stop the one highlighted in red is the last two routes that they narrow the possibilities down to all stop you can see one arcs up and the other follows u.s. 6. beside those two that were the finalists, there were six other routes, including one that ran along the colorado river. there was one that went along the mountains. this shows you that there was nothing historically inevitable about i-70. 1960, they ruled in favor of an interstate mostly following i-six. springsless, from idaho through summit county and eagle county, which were two of the remotest and most of skewer counties -- most of skewer counties. how colorado finally got its interstate through the high country and how it ended up following the route. there can be no question at all that interstate 70 package the high country. leisure-seekers to work this section of colorado that people had avoided. because of that, it spurred more investment in towards businesses and infrastructure. it began to have this effect, and this is important, before the construction. it was just in the planning stages. development began in the early 1960's. be chronics used to of feature interstate access, it was not actually there yet, but they use the promise to sell investors on the vale enterprise. they went around the country with a map that highlighted the .ocations in vail they decide decided that it was located on a feature interstate route. that even question before was built, i-70 would have that effect will stop i want to return to an idea i mentioned earlier. how it changed people's views of the high country, particularly by making visitors feel closer to nature. to be sure, there is real irony here. interstate i-70 was not remotely natural. there was a massive artificial intrusion. it would take heavy-handed modification of the natural landscape to shoehorn this giant superhighway into the rugged terrain of southern colorado. interstate highways have design specifications. sharp cannot be too because they will slow cars down. slopes cannot be too steep. that would deter from the smooth flow of traffic. there were all sorts of design standards for highways that were not conducive to building the highway in the high country. they were doing things like that -- blasting off mountainsides and anti-typing -- amputating hearts of mountains. it required relocating river channels and all sorts of heavy-handed manipulation. the most dramatic was the eisenhower tunnel. it buried -- broke through solid rock. the two westbound lanes opened in 1973. the two eastbound lanes are technically called the johnson tunnel. they have not been built yet. for allld open in 1979. of its artificiality and heavy-handed modification, it ended up enhancing the experience of nature for many visitors. it made it easier to access the forests and the rivers and the meadows. it made visitors feel closer to nature, even as they were driving along this artificial passage to get there. becomebehind country to a natural place for a vacation. it opens access to new landscapes. if free people from former difficulties of traversing this rugged terrain. i like this picture because it shows how i-70 provided this scenic viewpoint of the snowy peaks. it became sort of part of the scenery itself. i am not saying you have to like that. it insinuated itself into the landscape. they curves with the contours of the land. tunnel was an intrusion on the topography. it nestled into the natural setting. i-70 became part of the high country. we have a hard time imagining the geography in this region will stop the more inviting the high country, particularly this court -- quarter became to leisure-seekers, the more of them flocked here. there were second-home owners and growing numbers of permanent residence. more people were permanently relocating to the high country to live in emerging resort immunities. or they would live in the denver metro area. there was easy access to all of these recreational delights. if you think about it, the idea of proximity and easy access was premised on a greatly enhanced by the ongoing improvement of highways, linking denver to high country settings. colorado --came to 1947. the brochure in mountains are right in your backyard. more and more people came to colorado to live a worse way of life. -- tourist way of life. it was an ongoing basis, not just vacation. every weekend and every day. they would live near those recreational amenities. they have convenient access to them. had a way ofners consuming nature that could now become the basis for a permanent lifestyle. if you look at a promotional brochure urging you to move to jefferson county, it has as many images of forest recreation activities as it does everyday life. the shopping mall and the church will stop is holding it up as a place you can live this way of life. people who picked up on this promise have rearranged their entire lives and their careers and their personal identities around recreation in the high country will stop they were not just superficial consumers, but people have become very deeply invested in the high country recreational setting all stop -- recreational setting. that changed ways of relating to nature. and people became deeply personally invested in recreational settings in the high country, and often kindled in them a fierce desire to guard those settings against perceived threat all stop -- taurus development fostered these personal relationships to landscape. we saw an early form of this in the story i told earlier. 1958, the people of idaho realized how ugly their town was. there was a business incentive to clean up for the sake of attracting taurus -- tourists. as they started to take shape and more and more visitors and seasonal residents began to flock to this emerging vacation lands, popular environmental concerns defense and took on more dimension. itselferstate increasingly became the target of these environmental concerns. the interstate and its existence was crucial to the very emergence. now it was becoming the target of more and more concerned. there are many more examples i can give you. i think the single most revealing one is the outrage that erupted in the mid-1960's when they began making plans to cut a southward loop out of the highway corridor. the biggest loop left. they curves around the range. planners propose to bypass the loop like the earlier ones. go through the range and into east vail on the other side. this became the red buffalo tunnel because it was on the summit county side. the sierra club put out this map. area was ashaded wilderness area. that is the eagle that was, the eagles nest, and by legal definition, this place was supposed to be off-limits to roads construction. there was a clause in the wilderness act of 1964, that created the legal stabilization of wilderness, exempting this one wilderness area. officials empowered to withdraw wilderness protection from this one area so the interstate tunnel could be built. there was no other area in the country that had a clause like this. read buffalo became -- red buffalo became a national controversy in 1966, 1967, and became a rallying point. was proposed tunnel defeated in 1960. what is interesting is the coalition that lined up to do this. on the run hand -- on the one hand, the organizations that tunnel were made up hikers, the colorado wildlife federation, and a coordinating council, a coalition of smaller groups, almost all of which were timeized around one past or another, flyfishing, white water rafting, hunting, birdwatching, many others. these enthusiasts, people who became personally invested in door recreation, led the public charge against red buffalo. tourists boosters and business owners for whom the scenic and wild and recreational amenities of the country had become a matter of profit, prosperity. business interests on either end of the tunnel spoke out against red buffalo, so they were going tery from the booster purge approaches. one of the main arguments they made was to put that interstate to the wilderness area would degrade the area and so remove one of the leading tourist attractions from the region. took the lead on this. the town council took a strong buffalo.against red a leading voice against the red buffalo proposal, and their rationale was putting it there would jeopardize vail resident'' interests and business interests. this combination of interests, the potent alliance of recreational interests and business interests was what launched colorado's and vernon --environmental movement in the early 1970's. 1972 toewide vote in reject the 1976 winter olympics which had been granted denver. of denverhows a bit organizing committee literature which shows where venues are going to be. it counts heavily on the interstate highway access, i-70 access, to make it work. environmentalists and many others rejected this in 1972. they voted to deny state funding and caused it not to happen. another success for the environmental movement came two years later when the leader of theanti-olympic movement, most vocal politician in the state, was elected governor. alliance of recreational business interests and lifestyle interests became the paces for environmental movements that was very short-lived. that combination of interests saddled the movement with lethal internal contradictions. seriousould also argue, limitations and blind spots. what do i mean? the promoters of tourism and the consumers of tourist lifestyles i be able to agree on marginal things like that the feet of red but they parted ways on bigger issues like the olympic spirit to the feet of the olympics commits interests that popular environmentalism had gone totally out of control. for far-reaching land use reforms, these environmentally itded citizens hoped would protect against brawl landscapes, but the business trysts used their lobbying those reforms.t was not just the opposition of business interests that brought and fern mentalism 28 halt. it was hesitation, and an inherent uncertainty and inherent conservatism. people who felt invested in environmental issues because of their investment in outdoor recreation in a touristy way of life were not inclined to seriously challenge the system that had promoted and packaged all of those same recreational landscapes and amenities and theirties ahead reshaped lives around. consumerism is not a very good rescue for radicalism. i will mention one final controversy over interstate 70 to illustrate the point, and that was the debate in the later 1970's, early 1980's, about building the interstate through glenwood canyon. groups got involved in trying to canyon fromd interstate uglification. they propose to design its passage to the canyon anymore environmental the responsible way. notice that both of those ceededed alternatives ac to the viewpoint that somewhere or another a superhighway would go through. very few environmental organizations geared to propose that maybe there did not need to be a superhighway all the way through the high country, that oad was ok.o-lane r the small minority that raised this possibility that it could stay two lanes, a small group were mockeddenver, and marginalized as unrealistic dreamers and as enemies of the public interest because they were people standing in the way to oppose a four-lane road, safe access to recreation, and given that was a form of recreation that most outdoor lovers had invested themselves in, most of them laugh that people like john denver and their fight to stop the interstate construction, and settled for more limited goals, like building the interstate canyon in awood more environmentally sensitive way. instead of joining the fight to try to stop the construction, it seemed beyond the limits for them, they settled for the limited goal of making the interstate look nicer. what can we learn from stories like this? argued, they show how packaging and promotion of recreational places, resort villages, other things, landscapes for tourists consume could receive people's ways of connecting people and place. dismissnd to consumers as shallow, it would tom that consumers were able forge quite strong personal connections to the recreational places they were consuming. at the same time, the kind of that drew fromm his attachments had limits that were equally important to notice. consumers learn to care about their favorite places, but not necessarily about any others. provincialcal and more than holistic. it was a rescue for a movement that was conservative, because the consumption of places, landscapes was too rooted in the culture of entrepreneurialism, including automobile convenience and highway construction to oppose a serious challenge to them, even if such a challenge was needed. then again, even as consumers were constrained by -- it was a reason why people purchase it at all. connecting to settings that consumers did not -- for the most part it did. it did spur many of them to care on some level, in some way, about environmental issues. that leaves us with a troubling question, a set of questions, as we grapple with the difficult issues of growth and sustainability, including the debate over what to do about congestion and degradation along today. can environmental sensibilities ever real point us to a more sustainable way of living and doing business? on the other hand, if not for consumerism, would popular concern for environmental quality be as widespread, or would it exist at all? those might be unanswerable questions, but they are worth pondering. i will be happy to take any questions you might have for me. thanks very much. [applause] >> [indiscernible] these raise your hand -- [indiscernible] make sure you hold this microphone close to your mouth. [indiscernible] question -- the tipping of the balance in 1956 or 1957, the decision of creating the interstate in the mountains, it sounds like the military was the decisive factor. was there ever a military transport on i-70? eisenhower was famously part of the transfer of --using the lincoln highway. was there an event like that? of.ot that i am aware there was a movement of missile parts along the interstate from time to time, but i am not aware of a national transport, which was one of the things that apparently convinced him of the need for a system of defense highways. >> [indiscernible] fart seems to have been, as as i have been able to find. there was a lot of talk about the highway being defense highways. the official name of the the nationals system of interstate and defense highways. yes. >> right over here. hello? yes, two questions. i believe i read or heard that dhe interstate through glenwoo canyon cost more than the entire of the rest of interstate 70 cost total. is that -- >> i do not know if that is true, but would not be surprised. ballooning as they ran into unexpected geological obstacles. i would not be surprised, but i do not know the dollar values. >> another question about the eisenhower's involvement or lack of involvement. "the old gray mares of denver," the author tells a edry of how ed johnson and nicholson met with eisenhower. the bill had already passed the house of representatives. they asked eisenhower to help get approval for the interstate 70 to go west of denver. and eisenhower asked what he could do to help out, and they said get us an extra 1000 miles. called his head of department of transportation, whatever it was called then, and that was passed in the house. so i take it you do not agree with that? >> i do not agree it was that cut and dried. eisenhower supported the idea of butthousand extra miles, there were a lot of claimants. it was not a foregone conclusion that they would go to colorado and utah. even when congress approved that extension, that thousand-mile extension, it still was up to the highway technocrats to decide where it would go, who would get those extra thousand miles or how they would be divvied up. at that time, it is hard to relate to this now, but highway tohnocracy was difficult push around politically. there was a lot of deference to technocrats -- we think of anybody who claims expertise above the lyrical partisanship, we have a more cynical political culture than that, but there is difference to the judgment and the power of the highway technocrats at that time. even if eisenhower -- and there's no question eisenhower made happy noises about having an interstate to colorado. i was not able to find any evidence in the eisenhower library. that meetingnce at you're talking about, between nicholson and johnson and eisenhower. but the outcomes of those, the notes taken by others of aides, he was instructing his aides to extricate him from any commitment to the coloradans. probablyhe author was making it to need a story is what i would say. i have an old map of the highways of colorado, and i have been puzzling over why u.s. 24 and u.s. 50, why neither of those routes was ever considered for the interstate. >> the biggest reason was denver, that they go through from the greatest political power in colorado, but also the greatest sort of engineering argument for a utilitarian argument for a interstate to colorado would be one that went through denver. that is the single against reason. >> what about dillon reservoir? did that have anything to do with the interstate project? >> yes, it did. biggest thing that had to do with the project was wherewith the interstate. the engineers work with the possibility for a long time of running the interstate right over the top of the dam. that would have required a much larger dam. it is all converging at the same time. the interstate planners were making their plans for which path the interstate was going to take. the decision to run it through summit county was not made until in final decision was made 1960, and by that time 1 denver's engineering of the dam had run on. it had some effect, but by the time the interstate was designated, it was no longer an issue. >> [indiscernible] a water project. >> time for one more question. which one of you really wants to -- [laughter] coin.p a >> york guesstimate on vacation land of the huge traffic jams we see now on 70. how does that go to impact our economy and all the things you have been talking about? i am an academic, but i like to pick on the premise of questions sometimes. of debatehat so much over interstate 70 has evolved cout injection -- ongestion. it takes too darn long to get up there. for businesses, it might harm their businesses if people are deterred by nasty congestion. it is interesting that has become the core issue. i think it speaks to the limits of environmental consciousness, the fact that by developing consciousness that out of business interests you miss a lot of other ways of looking at the issue. which way that will go i have no idea. i got that question asked at the afternoon version of this talk, that historians are useless and projecting the future. an example, they expanded the tunnel to three political current support is for widening. whether there might be a toward viewing the problem, i issued things like environmental conditions change if oil becomes less cheap, if climate changes to the itree where radically transforms the recreation in the summer and winter in the mountains, other changes like that. our ways of looking at those problems might be forced to change as well. in terms of what the future 70, that isterstate the way she and sir -- the swishy answer i will give you. [laughter] you have more questions for him. i wish we had more time. if you have more questions, please step on up. he will be happy to answer your questions individually. stop by our gift shop. i am to answer questions as well. thank you very much. >> thank you, all. >> that was his grandson david. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] theonight you can watch service from arlington national cemetery with remarks by president obama and martin dempsey. eastern. after that a discussion about the impact of war on civilians. speakers include one of the three hikers taken hostage in iran in 2009. as part of the university of colorado world affairs conference tonight at 8:55 eastern on c-span. for over 35 years c-span brings public affairs events from washington directly to you him up putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, briefings, and conferences, and offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service of private images industry. brought to you by a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. d, and follow us on twitter. host: what did the administration announced over the weekend? guest: they're going to where veteranses can go for care. the health administration has been an internal bureaucracy. have their doctors and folks look them over here it with the recent scandal and the time concerns and the care delays, they will expand them and see ways they will take the trans-outside private hospitals. a lot of details have to be big move for the veterans administration. it is something veterans groups have had concerns about over the years. just tell well the v.a. can work. there is a momentum swinging now to see how much these scandals, just how long veterans have to wait. there is recognition the v.a. might not have enough folks to help everyone. >> we heard over the weekend, on "newsmakers," our program, from the chairman of the senate veterans affairs committee, the independent from vermont, saying i am open to that, allowing that's to go outside the system, but not permanently. he was very clear he and others would not support some sort of privatization and this would only be short-term. why is that?

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