Proclamation 3804—National Highway Week

There are now more than 100 million motor vehicle operators in the United States. They drive their automobiles and trucks nearly a trillion miles a year—over a network of 3.7 million miles of streets and roads that is the envy of the world.

These are impressive statistics, but they fail to convey the real contribution America's highways make to the economic and social life of the country. The best way of understanding that contribution is by considering what we would do without the road and system we have.

Today we are entering a new era in highway transportation. The creation of the Department of Transportation, and under it the Federal Highway Administration, marked a broadening of the Federal interest m total highway transportation.

We are becoming more and more concerned with the operation of those highways. We have begun an unprecedented effort to make our highways and the vehicles that operate on them as safe as man can achieve. We are engaged in a parallel effort to beautify our highways and roadsides, and to provide rest and recreation facilities for highway travelers.

The continued growth of highway travel reflects the demand of Americans for a greater mobility that broadens their opportunities for residence, recreation, and employment. The rapid growth of trucking reflects the increasing economy and efficiency of highway transport.

In serving these private and economic needs, however, we must always remember that highways are for the whole society's convenience and enjoyment. We must take pains to assure that highway development proceeds with a due respect for the needs of all our people—that it becomes neither an end in itself, nor an isolated phenomenon, unrelated to the orderly use of land.

Our unmatched achievements in highway transportation have been accomplished through a partnership of Federal, State, and local governments—in the finest tradition of democratic government. Those achievements should be acknowledged and celebrated by those who benefit from them.

Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning September 24, 1967, 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 twenty-third day of September in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON