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Pan-American Highway
The Pan-American Highway is a vast network of roads that stretches about 19,000 miles (about 30,000 kilometers) from Prudhoe Bay, United States, in the northernmost part of North America to Ushuaia, Argentina, at the southern tip of South America. It is recognized as the longest road in the world. The highway connects 14 countries: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.
No road in the U.S. or Canada is officially designated as part of the Pan-American Highway, which officially begins at the U.S.-Mexico border in Nuevo Laredo and runs south.
The highway is interrupted at the Darién Gap, a dense rainforest area between Panama and Colombia. No road traverses the Gap, and no car ferries have operated in the area for decades; drivers often opt to send their car by cargo ship from one country to the other. This means North and South America are separated.
The highway was built in stages. The first, not long after one could drive across the United States on a paved road, was the highway from Laredo, Texas, to Mexico City. The second stage was the Inter-American Highway to Panama City; previously there were no roads, and little commerce between most Central American countries. There was no road between Costa Rica and Panama until, concerned about access to the Panama Canal in a war situation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began a highway in 1941.
The third stage, which has not been completed and may never be, continues onward to the southern tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego National Park, near Ushuaia, Argentina. Both Panama and Colombia, as well as environmentalists, are opposed to building a highway through the Darién Gap that separates the two continents.
A Cuban proposal that was not carried out was to include a "circuito del Caribe" (Caribbean circuit). This would have expanded the highway to Puerto Juárez, Mexico (Cancún), and from there by ferry to Pinar del Río, Cuba, from there by road to Havana, and by ferry again to Key West, Florida, and the Overseas Highway. The deterioration of relations between Cuba and the U.S. after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 ended talk of this project.
The concept of an overland route from one tip of the Americas to the other was originally proposed as a railroad. In 1884 the U.S. Congress passed a law with a plan to build an inter-American rail system. This was discussed at the First Pan-American Conference in 1889; however, construction never started. It was abandoned in concept after the independence of Panama in 1903, when work on the canal began.
The concept of building a highway, rather than a railroad, emerged at the Fifth International Conference of American States in 1923, after the automobile and other vehicles had begun to replace railroads for both passenger and goods transportation. The first conference regarding construction of the highway opened in Buenos Aires on October 3, 1925.
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Pan-American Highway
The Pan-American Highway is a vast network of roads that stretches about 19,000 miles (about 30,000 kilometers) from Prudhoe Bay, United States, in the northernmost part of North America to Ushuaia, Argentina, at the southern tip of South America. It is recognized as the longest road in the world. The highway connects 14 countries: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.
No road in the U.S. or Canada is officially designated as part of the Pan-American Highway, which officially begins at the U.S.-Mexico border in Nuevo Laredo and runs south.
The highway is interrupted at the Darién Gap, a dense rainforest area between Panama and Colombia. No road traverses the Gap, and no car ferries have operated in the area for decades; drivers often opt to send their car by cargo ship from one country to the other. This means North and South America are separated.
The highway was built in stages. The first, not long after one could drive across the United States on a paved road, was the highway from Laredo, Texas, to Mexico City. The second stage was the Inter-American Highway to Panama City; previously there were no roads, and little commerce between most Central American countries. There was no road between Costa Rica and Panama until, concerned about access to the Panama Canal in a war situation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began a highway in 1941.
The third stage, which has not been completed and may never be, continues onward to the southern tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego National Park, near Ushuaia, Argentina. Both Panama and Colombia, as well as environmentalists, are opposed to building a highway through the Darién Gap that separates the two continents.
A Cuban proposal that was not carried out was to include a "circuito del Caribe" (Caribbean circuit). This would have expanded the highway to Puerto Juárez, Mexico (Cancún), and from there by ferry to Pinar del Río, Cuba, from there by road to Havana, and by ferry again to Key West, Florida, and the Overseas Highway. The deterioration of relations between Cuba and the U.S. after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 ended talk of this project.
The concept of an overland route from one tip of the Americas to the other was originally proposed as a railroad. In 1884 the U.S. Congress passed a law with a plan to build an inter-American rail system. This was discussed at the First Pan-American Conference in 1889; however, construction never started. It was abandoned in concept after the independence of Panama in 1903, when work on the canal began.
The concept of building a highway, rather than a railroad, emerged at the Fifth International Conference of American States in 1923, after the automobile and other vehicles had begun to replace railroads for both passenger and goods transportation. The first conference regarding construction of the highway opened in Buenos Aires on October 3, 1925.