Seventy years ago next month (Oct. 29, 1954), President Eisenhower made an impassioned speech in Cadillac Square, downtown Detroit, calling for a new day; taking the country out of “the shackles of secondary roads.”

Influenced by his youthful travels in the United States, and seeing the autobahns of a conquered Germany, President Eisenhower was the great proponent, the driving force of the Interstate Highway System.

He appointed a Marietta, Ga., military legend to oversee financing of the massive construction project.

General Lucius D. Clay — nicknamed “The Great Uncompromiser" — led the successful Berlin Airlift after World War II, and the creation of a new transportation system in the United States.

Mostly completed in 1970, the interstates changed America. Rural and urban, reshaped for all times.

And shuffled off to irrelevancy were the mainstays of two-lane travel: U.S. Route 66, U.S. Route 36, and U.S. Route 301 running through Georgia.

The state established the nation's first roadside “Welcome Center” on the latter's once-busy stretch of Georgia asphalt.  Then it was copied all across the country.

It’s been a very long time since U.S. Route 301 was relevant for cross-country travel. But the center, funded by the Georgia Legislature, remains a hub of traveler activity.

We had a chance to visit Sylvania, Ga. (near Augusta and Statesboro) for some truly historic “southern hospitality.”