The Pan-American Highway Explained

Welcome to the Pan-American Highway, a road spanning the North, Central and South American continents, and with 19 000 miles or 30 000 kilometers, it is where many consider the longest road in the world. Traveling across it takes you from arctic climates through arid deserts to tropical rainforests and back to polar tundras. Originally designed as one continuous road connecting all three continents, over time every participating country maintained jurisdiction over designating, building and maintaining their stretch of the highway, leading to today's version being a diverse network of highways with strongly varying quality, safety standards and things you can experience along the way. The original idea of a Pan-American Highway comes from the United States in the 19th century, which wanted to connect the then rural and disconnected Central and South America through a transcontinental railway system to establish new trade routes and to allow for easier political power projection south of Mexico. The idea never really took off though, until the US auto industry started booming in the 1920s and lobbied for the revival of the project to open up new markets and supply chains to the south. The first concrete political action was taken in 1937, where the 14 countries through which the proposed highway would lead signed the Convention on the Pan-American Highway, requiring the participants to achieve speedy construction by all adequate means. The first country to complete their section was Mexico over 30 years after signing the treaty, with a stretch from Nuevo Laredo to the Guatemalan border, and in the following years the rest of the Central and South American countries followed suit. With the Pan-American Highway being an idea of the United States, they have largely funded and developed the road building in the Central and South American countries. Over decades, hundreds of millions of dollars were put into everything from the initial surveying to the construction of roads, tunnels and bridges, which lead to the completion of the final stretch in 1963. Today, the official route, which is explicitly marked as the Pan-American Highway, is only the section between the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo and Buenos Aires, Argentina. The US's and Canadian section has the clear start in Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska, but due to the lack of an officially designated route, several states claim their section to be the official one, leading to a total of four north-south highways, with the routes through Denver and Dallas being the most recognized ones. After the southern Mexican border, the Pan-American Highway passes the capitals of all five nations in Central America, as well as its highest altitude over the Cerro de la Muerte in Costa Rica. The mountain, which translates to the Mountain of Death, got its name from before the construction of the road, but landslides, tumbling rocks, poor visibility, narrow roads, potholes and unpaved road sections are still making it deserve its name. The Costa Rican section of the Pan-American Highway is generally considered the least maintained stretch, but if you were to actually want to drive from North to South America, this isn't even what you should fear the most. Following the highway from Costa Rica into Panama, you quickly notice that Yaviza will be the end of your road journey for now. Just behind the little Panamanian village lays what is known as the Darien Gap, or the Darien National Park. The 100 kilometer stretch to the next Colombian city is full of steep mountains, swampy marshland of the El Trato River Delta, untouched and mosquito-ridden rainforest, and thousands of indigenous people who call this region home. No paved road has yet been built here, and despite the best efforts of the US, this will most likely stay this way for the foreseeable future. While the non-stop connection between the three continents may be a convenient opportunity for travelers, there are many good reasons why the final stretch of the Pan-American Highway should never be built. Firstly, the region is the livelihood of many indigenous people, and contains an extremely diverse and fragile ecosystem, which is one of the very few forests which has not been jumbled up by civilization yet. Also, the geographical barrier between the continents contains the spread of tropical disease, it prevents drug trafficking and its associated violence, it prevents the cattle-borne foot and mouth disease from spreading to North America, and finally, the construction of the Pan-American Highway in other parts of Central America has brought with it severe deforestation of the rainforests which is not something the Panamanians and Colombians are very fond of. Travelers typically use ferries from Panama to the Colombian city of Turbo, which is also where the official Pan-American Highway continues its course southward. Traveling along the South American Pacific Coast, through Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and finally Buenos Aires and Argentina, the official route finally comes to an end. Similar to the different available routes which are unofficially part of the Pan-American Highway in the United States and also gives you different options to continue your journey. Many see the main stem of the highway system continuing down the Atlantic coast through Chile and back to Argentina to reach the southern most city in the world called Ushuaia, while others prefer to stay on the Pacific coast following the Chile Route 5 to Puerto Montt. Overall, the Pan-American Highway is a vital transportation link between almost all of the western parts of the Americas, bringing people and economies closer together for the past 60 years. While the statement from the beginning of the video that it is considered the longest road in the world can be debated due to nature showing limits to humanity in the Darien Gap, people have shown tremendous persistence in traveling the course of the highway in its entirety. Between 1977 and 1983, the Brit George Megan walked the 30,431 kilometers or 19,019 miles from Ushuaia to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and in 2018, Austrian endurance cyclist completed the feat on a bicycle in just 84 days. Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video. If you want to see more like it, be sure to subscribe and leave a like. Cheers!