The Pan-American Highway (Portuguese: Rodovia / Auto-estrada Pan-americana, Spanish: Carretera Panamericana or Spanish: Autopista Panamericana) is a network of roads measuring about 47,958 kilometres (29,800 mi) in total length. Except for an 87 kilometres (54 mi) rainforest break, called the Darién Gap, the road links the mainland nations of the Americas in a connected highway system. According to Guinness World Records, the Pan-American Highway is the world's longest "motorable road". However, because of the Darién Gap, it is not possible to cross between South America and Central America by traditional motor vehicle.
The Pan-American Highway system is mostly complete and extends from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in North America to the lower reaches of South America. Several highway termini are claimed to exist, including the cities of Puerto Montt and Quellón in Chile and Ushuaia in Argentina. No comprehensive route is officially defined in Canada and the United States, though several highways in the U.S. are called "Pan-American".
The Pan-American Highway passes through many diverse climates and ecological types, from dense jungles, to arid deserts, to cold mountain passes. Since the highway passes through many countries, it is far from uniform. Some stretches of the highway are passable only during the dry season, and in many regions driving is occasionally hazardous.
Famous sections of the Pan-American Highway include the Alaska Highway and the Inter-American Highway (the section between the United States and the Panama Canal). Both of these sections were built during World War II as a means of supply of remote areas without danger of attack by U-boats.
Jake Silverstein, writing in 2006, described the Pan-American Highway as "a system so vast, so incomplete, and so incomprehensible it is not so much a road as it is the idea of Pan-Americanism itself…"[1]
The Northern Pan-American Highway travels through 9 countries:
The Southern Pan-American Highway travels through 14 countries:
Important spurs also lead into Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay:
The Pan American Highway goes north out of Mexico into The United States at Laredo, Texas. From there, no official route exists between there and Prudhoe Bay. Stretches of road lay claim to the Pan American Highway in Canada and the United States. Interstate 35 is named Pan American Expressway through San Antonio, Texas. The Pan American Highway Association claims U.S. Route 81 from McPherson, Kansas to Watertown, South Dakota. The Alaska Highway through Alaska, the Yukon and northern British Columbia also claims to be part of the Pan American Highway, as well as the Dalton Highway in Alaska, which is the only road in North America to reach the Arctic Ocean.
A notable break in the highway is a section of land located in the Darién Province in Panama and the Colombian border called the Darién Gap. It is an 87 kilometres (54 mi) stretch of rainforest. The gap has been crossed by adventurers on bicycle, motorbike, all-terrain vehicle, and foot, dealing with jungle, swamp, insects, and other hazards.
Many people, groups, indigenous populations, and governments are opposed to completing the Darién portion of the highway. Reasons for opposition include protecting the rain forest, containing the spread of tropical diseases, protecting the livelihood of indigenous peoples in the area, preventing drug trafficking and its associated violence from emanating out of Colombia, and preventing foot and mouth disease from entering North America.[2] The extension of the highway as far as Yaviza resulted in severe deforestation alongside the highway route within a decade.
One option proposed, in a study by Bio-Pacifico, is a short ferry link from Colombia to a new ferry port in Panama, with an extension of the existing Panama highway that would complete the highway without violating these environmental concerns. The ferry would cross the Gulf of Urabá from Turbo, Colombia, to a new Panamanian port (possibly Carreto) connected to a Caribbean coast extension of the highway. Efficient routing would probably dictate that the existing route to Yaviza be relegated to secondary road status.
The concept of a route from one tip of the Americas to the other was originally proposed at the First Pan-American Conference in 1889 as a railroad; however, nothing ever came of this proposal. The idea of the Pan-American Highway emerged at the Fifth International Conference of American States in 1923, where it was originally conceived as a single route. The first Pan-American highway conference convened October 5, 1925 in Buenos Aires. Mexico was the first Latin American country to complete its portion of the highway, in 1950.[1]
It was on April 16, 1928 when the “Expedição Brasileira da Estrada Panamericana” began. Supported by President Washington Luis, the expedition sailed from Rio de Janeiro, commanded by army lieutenant Leonidas Borges de Oliveira, supported by the observer Francisco Lopes da Cruz and the mechanic Mario Fava, their companions. [3]
These three brave adventurers, driving two "Ford Model T" and with a lot of courage, set off to New York with a mission to map and, since then, designing the road that in the future would be the highway that would link the three Americas; the Pan-American Highway. The initiative was successful ten years after its inception (1928-1938), when the three Brazilians arrived in New York, United States, the last city to be visited before returning to Brazil. Throughout the journey, the expedition covered 28,000 km of roads and unknown ways, passed through fifteen countries and facing, with shovels, picks, dynamite and the dream of finding a place in history, forests, jungles, wild rivers and even the imposing Andes. [4]
In numerous parades, the three adventurers met such historical figures of the Americas as Untouchable Eliot Ness, the revolutionary Nicaraguan Augusto Cesar Sandino, the U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the pioneer of the automobile industry, Henry Ford, among many others. [5]
Leonidas Borges, Francisco Lopes and Mario Fava overcame hundreds of obstacles to continue the dream Panamericano. After the trip, the construction of passages that there was not yet complete, with the exception of mileage located in Brazil, however, the story of these noble heroes is still unknown to many people of our country. [6]
No single road in the U.S. or Canada has been officially or unofficially designated as the Pan-American Highway. In 1966, the Federal Highway Administration designated the entire Interstate Highway System as part of the Pan-American Highway System.[7][8]
Thus the primary road officially starts at the U.S.-Mexico border. The original route began at the border at Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas (opposite Laredo, Texas) and went south through Mexico City. Later branches were built to the border at Nogales, Sonora (Nogales, Arizona); Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (El Paso, Texas); Piedras Negras, Coahuila (Eagle Pass, Texas); Reynosa, Tamaulipas (Pharr, Texas); and Matamoros, Tamaulipas (Brownsville, Texas).
On the other hand, several roads in the U.S. were locally named after the Pan-American Highway. When the section of Interstate 35 in San Antonio, Texas was built, it was named the Pan Am Expressway, as an extension of the original route from Laredo. Interstate 25 in Albuquerque, New Mexico has been named the Pan-American Freeway, as an extension of the route to El Paso. U.S. Route 85, which goes north from El Paso, is designated the CanAm Highway, which continues into Canada in the province of Saskatchewan, before terminating at La Ronge. The CANAMEX Corridor is also similarly designated throughout the western United States, and continuing into the Canadian province of Alberta. Finally, Interstate 69 from the Canadian Border at Port Huron, Michigan to Indianapolis, Indiana, and its planned extension southward to the Mexican Border at Laredo, Texas has been designated as the NAFTA Superhighway along with Ontario Highway 402 in Canada. When completed, I-69 will connect with an official branch of the Pan-Am Highway at the Laredo-Nuevo Laredo border crossing.
Between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and Panama City, Panama, the route is known as the Inter-American Highway, and more specifically, in the Central American countries, it is known as the CA-1 (Central America 1).
The original route to Laredo travels up Mexican Federal Highway 85 from Mexico City. The various spurs follow:
From Mexico City to the border with Guatemala, the Highway follows Mexican Federal Highway 190.
It passes through the Central American countries with the highway designation of CA-1 (Central American Highway 1). In Guatemala, it passes through 10 departments, including Guatemala, where it passes through Guatemala City. In El Salvador, it passes through the cities of Santa Ana, Santa Tecla, Antiguo Cuscatlan, San Salvador, San Martin, San Miguel, and crosses the border into Honduras at Amatillo. From Honduras, it passes into Nicaragua, passing though the Nicaraguan cities of Chinandega, León, and Managua, before entering Costa Rica at Peñas Blancas. In Costa Rica, it passes through Liberia, San José, Cartago, Pérez_Zeledón, Palmares, Neily, before crossing into Panama at Paso Canoas. In Panama, it crosses the Panama Canal, and ends at Yaviza, Panama at the edge of the Darién Gap. The road had formerly ended at Cañita, Panama, 110 miles (180 km) north of its current end. United States government funding was particularly significant to complete a high-level bridge over the Panama Canal, during the years when the canal was administered by the United States.
The southern part of the highway begins in northwestern Colombia, from where it follows Colombia Highway 62 to Medellín. At Medellín, Colombia Highway 54 leads to Bogotá, but Colombia Highway 25 turns south for a more direct route. Colombia Highway 72 is routed southwest from Bogotá to join Highway 25 at Murillo. Highway 25 continues all the way to the border with Ecuador.
Ecuador Highway 35 runs the whole length of that country. Peru Highway 1 carries the Pan-American Highway all the way through Peru to the border with Chile.
In Chile, the highway follows Chile Highway 5 south to a point north of Santiago (Llaillay), where the highway splits into two parts, one of which goes through Chilean territory to Quellón on Chiloé Island, after which it continues as the Carretera Austral. The other part goes east along Chile Highway 60, which becomes Argentina National Route 7 at the Argentinian border and continues to Buenos Aires, the end of the main highway.[9] The highway network also continues south of Buenos Aires along Argentina National Route 3 towards the city of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego.
One branch, known as the Simón Bolívar Highway, runs from Bogotá (Colombia) to Guiria (Venezuela). It begins by using Colombia Highway 71 all the way to the border with Venezuela. From there it uses Venezuela Highway 1 to Caracas and Venezuela Highway 9 to its end at Guiria.
A continuation of the Pan-American Highway to the Brazilian cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro uses a ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia in Uruguay and Uruguay Highway 1 to Montevideo. Uruguay Highway 9 and Brazil Highway 471 route to near Pelotas, from where Brazil Highway 116 leads to Brazilian main cities.
Another branch, from Buenos Aires to Asunción in Paraguay, heads out of Buenos Aires on Argentina National Route 9. It switches to Argentina National Route 11 at Rosario, which crosses the border with Paraguay right at Asunción. Other branches probably exist across the center of South America.
The highway does not have official segments to Belize, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, nor to any of the island nations in the Americas. However, highways from Venezuela link to Brazilian Trans-Amazonian highway that provide a southwest entrance to Guyana, route to the coast, and follow a coastal route through Suriname to French Guiana. Belize was supposedly included in the route at one time, as they switched which side of the road they drive on. As British Honduras, they were the only Central American country to drive on the left side of the road.
Plans have been discussed for including the West Indies in the Pan American Highway system. According to these, a system of ferries would be established to connect terminal points of the highway. Travelers would then be able to ferry from Key West to Havana, drive to the eastern tip of Cuba, ferry to Haiti, drive through Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and ferry again to Puerto Rico. Included in this system would also be a ferry from the western tip of Cuba to the Yucatan Peninsula. Mexico has already surveyed a route which will run across the Yucatan, Campeche, and Chiapas to San Cristobal de Las Casas, on the Pan American Highway. ("The Pan American Highway System" by Travel Division Pan American Union, Washington D.C. October 1947)
The Pan-American highway is the subject of a 2006 conceptual art piece, The School of Panamerican Unrest, where Mexican-born artist Pablo Helguera is attempting to drive a portable schoolhouse for the length of the entire route.
The travel writer Tim Cahill wrote a book, Road Fever, about his record-setting 24-day drive from Ushuaia in the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay in the U.S. state of Alaska with professional long-distance driver Garry Sowerby, much of their route following the Pan-American Highway.[10]
In the British motoring show Top Gear, the presenters drove on a section of the road in their off-road vehicles in the Bolivian Special.
In 2003, Kevin Sanders, a long-distance rider, broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest traversal of the highway by motorcycle in 34 days.[11]
| OpenStreetMap has geographic data related to: Pan-American Highway |