Pan American Highway

The Pan-American Highway (french: (Auto)route panaméricaine/transaméricaine; pt, Rodovia/Auto-estrada Pan-americana; es, Autopista/Carretera/Ruta Panamericana) is a network of roads stretching across the Americas and measuring about in total length. Except for a break of approximately across the border between southeast Panama and northwest Colombia, called the Darién Gap, the roads link almost all of the Pacific coastal countries of the Americas in a connected highway system. According to ''Guinness World Records'', the Pan-American Highway is the world's longest "motorable road". It is only possible to cross by land between South America and Central America—the last town in Colombia to the first outpost in Panama—by a difficult and dangerous hike of at least four days through the Darién Gap, one of the rainiest areas of the planet.

The Pan-American Highway passes through many diverse climates and ecological typesranging from dense jungles to arid deserts and barren tundra. Some areas are fully passable only during the dry season, and in many regions driving is occasionally hazardous. The Pan-American Highway system is physically mostly complete and extends in de facto terms from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in North America, to the southernmost reaches of South America. Several southern highway termini are claimed, including the cities of Puerto Montt and Quellón in Chile, and Ushuaia in Argentina.

West and north of the Darién Gap, this roadway is also known as the Inter-American Highway through Central America and Mexico. There it splits into several spurs leading to the Mexico–United States border.

Concept of the highway

The notion that there could and should be an inter-American highway, linking the nations of North, Central, and South America, is an idea originating from the United States. Except for Cuba, no politician from a Central or South American country has ever called for it, or has spoken in favor of it. It has been largely engineered, funded, and American-style road signs erected, by the United States.

It 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, and environmentalists as well, are opposed to building a highway through the Darién Gap that separates the two continents.

The Cuban proposal, forgotten today since nothing came of it, was to create a "circuito del Caribe" (Caribbean circuit). They would have expanded the highway to Puerto Juárez, México (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.

Development and construction

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 occurred on October 5, 1925.

Finally, on July 29, 1937, in the latter years of the Great Depression, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Canada, and the United States signed the ''Convention on the Pan-American Highway'', whereby they agreed to achieve speedy construction, by all adequate means. Thirteen years later, in 1950, Mexico became the first Latin American country to complete its portion of the highway.

In signage, although the idea of a Pan-American highway originated in the United States, and is indirectly linked to the booming American auto industry, no single route in the United States (except in Alaska) has been designated, much less marked, as the U.S. portion of the Pan-American Highway. However, the I-25 is labeled as the Pan-American freeway in states such as New Mexico and Colorado. According to the federal Department of Transportation, the Interstate Highway System is the United States' section of the highway. In Canada it is not marked at all. Much of the highway in Latin America is explicitly marked, at American instigation, as ''Pan-American'' (commonly or ).

Countries served

The Northern Pan-American Highway travels through nine countries, including in Central America:

* Canada (CANAMEX Corridor unofficial)
* United States (Interstate Highway System official)
* Mexico
* Guatemala
* El Salvador
* Honduras
* Nicaragua
* Costa Rica
* Panama

The Southern Pan-American Highway travels through five countries:

* Colombia
* Ecuador
* Peru
* Chile
* Argentina

Important spurs also connect with four other South American countries:

* Bolivia
* Brazil
* Paraguay
* Uruguay

Northern section

Alaska and Canada

The Alaska Highway

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