How can there be interstate highways in Hawaii?
Back in the late 1950s Hawaiian officials had the same thought you did (about the interstates, I mean; we’ll ignore the business about pizzas). But they didn’t think it was so funny. In fact they were quite concerned that some literal-minded bureaucrat was going to say they weren’t eligible for federal interstate highway money merely because there was this thing called an ocean separating them from the rest of the country. They were probably right to worry. Early federal highway legislation said the interstate system “shall be designated within the continental United States,” thereby excluding islands. But Hawaiians pointed out that one of the purposes of the interstate system was to strengthen national defense, and that Hawaii (specifically, the island of Oahu) was crammed with military installations that needed to be connected by good roads. Congress evidently saw the wisdom of this and dealt with the matter in the Hawaii Omnibus Act of 1960, which took care of various postadmission
