Proclamation 3922—National Highway Week, 1969

Americans today own more than 80 million passenger cars and drive each of them an average of 9,600 miles a year—or three times the distance from Portland, Maine, to San Diego, California. This is a measure of the personal mobility we now enjoy through highway transportation, one of the major elements in our transportation system.

It is a mobility that opens new horizons in employment opportunity, in choice of residence, and in educational, religious, political, recreational, and other social activities,

Highway transportation has developed from a vast private investment in motor vehicles and a vast public investment in highway facilities. These facilities, in turn, are to a large extent, the product of a unique Federal-State partnership in road building.

In 1956 we called upon this partnership to build a new network of super-roads, the National System of Inter-state and Defense Highways. Now two-thirds completed, the Interstate System already is providing the public with the benefits of safer, faster, and more economical highway transportation.

To assure the best use of the public investment in highways, all Americans must give special attention to improving the safety and efficiency of highway transportation.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning September 21, 1969, as National Highway Week, and I urge Federal, State, and local officials, as well as highway industry and other organizations, to hold appropriate ceremonies during that week in recognition of what highway transportation means to our Nation.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 13th day of August, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-fourth.

RICHARD NIXON