The original Oakland Expressway aka Red Feather Expressway aka US 40 circa 1935.

The Rise of American's Suburban Love of Automobile Started here!

The east-west aligned Dinky Trolley system of the 1890s must have been quickly taxed by 1920 as the various southeastern subdivisions of Clayton were quickly built, more than doubling the population who were forced to use the Dinky to get to either downtown Clayton or St. Louis City, particularly once the De Mun Avenue spur was constructed in 1923. Happily, by 1920 as the automobile culture was taking off, Clayton had macadamized Clayton Road allowing more efficient east-west access to downtown Clayton from Forest Park. Forest Park, however, served both as a source of suburban identity for the new residents of the eastern half of Clayton and a substantial barrier to downtown St. Louis commuting.

In 1934 the Missouri Department of Transportation proposed a traffic relief highway for traffic from the west connecting to Clayton Road over Delmar and Page in University City. Oakland Avenue is still on the southern boundary of Forest Park. Oakland was already overloaded with commuters. The State built the Oakland Express Highway connecting Clayton Road in the southwest corner of Forest Park with Sarah Street and Lindell Boulevard in midtown St. Louis City. The fifty-foot wide, six-mile-long concrete roadway with fences along both sides and grade separations from intersecting roads roughly paralleled Oakland. It drastically reduced commuting time until after World War II because the speed limit on the next highway was 30 miles per hour compared to eight MPH on park roads and 20 MPH on Oakland, which also had stoplights.

The Oakland Expressway (to become present day US 40) was a historic moment for American commuting. Scientific American noted that the expressway, the only one of it's kind outside the New York City area, was being "watched with interests by other cities" to see if it could fulfill the promise that "motor travel can be made safe as well as rapid" by separating highway traffic from that on city streets.

After World War II the expressway was dubbed the "Red Feather Expressway" after a favorite charity of Clayton Brahmins. The Red Feather Expressway allowed automobile commutes to supplant the existing trolley and railroad lines. From about 1936 until 1955 the Red Feather Expressway from downtown St. Louis to the city limits served as a primary commuter route for the residents of the Hi-Pointe and De Mun residential neighborhoods. However, by 1955 it attained overcapacity by 6000 frustrated commuters traveling from Clayton and Richmond Heights because the Daniel Boone portion of The National Road (US 40) was not yet connected to allow viable commutes from suburbs west of Clayton. (The Census Bureau has long noted that American commuters are not willing to commute longer than 40-minutes on average between work and home.)

The Red Feather Expressway was upgraded around 1955 to merge with Market Street closer to downtown, which quickly clogged with 55,000 commuters. These early-established patterns continue today with roughly 900,000 vehicles traveling east-west daily and with US 40 having the dubious distinction of carrying the largest share of those vehicles. By contrast, north-south traffic on I-270 and I-170 handles roughly one-third of the same traffic.

Forest Park Parkway was not constructed until the 1960s. The Parkway allowed faster east-west commutes through the northern end of Clayton and University City (along the former Rock Island Railroad right-of-way). The creation of the parkway continued to solidify the eastern subdivisions of Clayton as pivotal to the westward pattern of suburban succession of the automobile culture from St. Louis to Clayton. Of course, the connection of the Daniel Boone Expressway with the Red Feather Expressway, which morphed into US 40(I-64) finally solidified the prominence of the eastern subdivisions of Clayton to future suburban expansion along the Central Corridor.