Interstate 80 is the largest public works project in state history. It's 455 miles of concrete, asphalt and steel, dissecting the state from the Missouri River to Wyoming.

A plaque in the rest area overlooking that stripe of metal best describes how the Interstate is much more than a road: "A vital link between eastern and western Nebraska; a link that binds our state, culturally and economically."

[Ken Gottula/Retired NE Dept. of Roads Engineer] What we put into the pavement across all 48 foot of roadway was something similar to this.

Ken Gottula helped design the markers you see near Sidney. A 46-year veteran of the state Department of Roads, he worked on the project from start to finish.

[Gottula] It was a great undertaking, a lot of money, a lot of miles. And right now you wonder how could this country have survived if you didn't have the system.

Construction began south of Gretna in 1957. The Federal government said Nebraska's Interstate had to pass by Omaha, Lincoln, North Platte and Big Springs, near the Colorado border. It left the exact location up to the state - and led to some pretty heated debate.

[Gottula] Everybody wanted it somewhere near them, and nobody really wanted it to go through the town when they realized what would happen.

This was especially true in rural Nebraska.

[Terry Gibson/NE Dept. of Roads] Especially as I said to farmers, where they were going to lose some property for the Interstate system. It segregated a lot of them, when it went right through the middle of their farm and they weren't happy about that.

Department of Roads engineer Terry Gibson began working on the Interstate as a college student in the 1960s.

[Gibson] A lot of time we had to redo surveys because the farmers would go out and remove our stakes because they were just trying to slow us down and stop the progress.

There were other tensions. Once construction began, contractors built the road in different areas of the state at the same time. This appeased rural groups who were concerned about a construction schedule that would favor Omaha and Lincoln. A committee was even formed to monitor the amount of Interstate built in rural versus non-rural areas.

Work continued steadily as money was available. It cost nearly a million dollars for each mile, with the federal government paying 90 percent of the price tag. In 1974, Nebraska became the first state to complete its portion of the Interstate. In October of that year five thousand people gathered at this spot west of Sidney to celebrate completion.

Ken Gottula wasn't there. The man who just might be the father of Nebraska's Interstate missed graduation day. He was in Kansas watching a Husker football game.

[Gottula] I felt I would be appreciated at Lawrence more than I would be appreciated at the closing ceremony.

Today thousands of vehicles travel I-80 - up to 35 thousand a day in the highest traffic areas near Omaha. That's two or three times more than anyone imagined. A few other facts and figures… you'll find 80 interchanges, 442 bridges and 25 rest areas on Nebraska's I-80.

In fact Nebraska was kind of a leader in rest area development. Gottula says we were the first state to build rest areas that were more than just outhouses.

[Gottula] They became so popular that the rest of the nation began to follow. The federal highway administration approved it.

The Interstate is also a big art gallery. This steel sculpture is called Erma's Desire. It's one of ten rest area sculptures commissioned in 1976 to celebrate the Bicentennial.

Another number of interest is 87 million dollars. That's what the state will spend on I-80 maintenance and construction this year.

[Gibson] When we designed the Interstate, it was for twenty years. So a lot of the pavement is getting over 20 years, 30 years old, and… So we're in the process of trying to maintain existing pavement or we gotta go in and remove and replace.

On an average day you'll find more than a dozen construction projects in progress.

[Gibson] I'd say 120 to 150 miles have been replaced with concrete pavement, and the majority of it I think has been overlaid at least once.

The folks who spend the most time on I-80 say it's generally a good drive through Nebraska.

[Allen Ballard/Kansas City Trucker] It's a good road. It's wide open, I like that. The less traffic, of course, the better.

[Tim Baker/Maywood, NE Trucker] It's improving. They need to do some more work on it yet though. You know, there's ruts in the highway. Throws one of these things in a skid, you know, when you've got ice on it.

Like the volume of traffic, I-80's value for the state's economy was also somewhat unexpected.

[Al Wenstrand/Director, NE Dept. of Economic Development] You knew that if you had easy transportation that things were going to grow. But I don't think anybody envisioned how important it was going to become to our transportation system. I-80 is the lifeblood of Nebraska's economy.

Just look at how communities on the Interstate have grown. Kearney for example doubled in size since 1960. It's unusual to find more than moderate growth for towns away from I-80.

[Ron Tillery/President, Kearney Development Council] I think that a good deal of that growth can be linked back to the community's proximity to the Interstate, and the transportation flexibility that it afforded us.

Development along the road that runs north from I-80 into Kearney is especially evident. Twenty-five years ago this area was mostly open fields. The southern edge of town was a mile away from the Interstate.

State Patrol superintendent Tom Nesbitt started as a trooper working the Kearney area.

[Col. Tom Nesbitt/Superintendent, NE State Patrol] I can remember when I was in Kearney in 1978. There was a gas station and a motel at the interchange, maybe two motels.

Now it's hotels, restaurants or other hospitality-oriented businesses as far as you can see. This helped Kearney experience a fifty- percent growth in jobs in the last twenty years. In the last ten years the amount of money people from outside the area spent in Kearney doubled.

[Ron Tillery] So Kearney's been fortunate in that there was enough room allowed for future development but still close enough to where it was convenient for people to exit the Interstate and create the critical mass necessary to support retail development.

Kearney has now taken power, sewer and water lines south of the I-80 interchange. Tillery says, along with the opening of the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument and Tri-City Arena that means even more growth for Kearney in the near future.

Wenstrand says we'll continue to see retail and industrial growth all along the Interstate corridor. That's in spite of improvements in information technology that some might think would make an Interstate location less important.

[Al Wenstrand] That corridor is really the lifeblood for what's going to happen in a lot of development in the next twenty years. We're trying to push development in all 93 counties, but the easiest ones to find development opportunities are the ones where the infrastructure and the transportation issues make the most sense. And so it's much easier to locate and expand businesses along the Interstate 80 corridor including Omaha and Lincoln and all the way through Sidney.

[Gibson] This is already under construction from the 126th Street interchange in Omaha to the N-50 interchange.

The future also means another kind of expansion for the Interstate. Studies show that because of increasing traffic, six lanes will be needed from Omaha to Grand Island in the next twenty years. Near Omaha, contractors have already begun adding two more lanes.

[Gibson] We hope to have the six lanes to Lincoln by 2012.

It won't be cheap - at an estimated cost of 340 million dollars, expanding the Interstate from Omaha to Lincoln alone will cost almost as much as building all of I-80 in the first place. Gibson says maintaining two lanes of traffic during construction accounts for about ten percent of that price tag.

[Gibson] I'm not sure they're aware how difficult it is to maintain that kind of flow on the Interstate while we rebuild stuff.

Growing as fast is drug trafficking and other crimes on Interstate 80.

[Greg Goltz/NE State Patrol] Wouldn't it be ironic that there's a load of drugs in this vehicle and it's supposed to have two license plates?

Next week we'll hit the road with a state trooper for a first hand look at the darker side of life on Nebraska's City on Wheels.

Reporting for STATEWIDE, I'm Mike Tobias.

Reported by Statewide correspondent, Mike Tobias.

[Mike Tobias/Reporter] On any given day you'll see up to 35 thousand vehicles pass by the busiest stretch of Interstate 80. You'll see business travelers, commuters, families on vacation and semi-trailer trucks. You'll also see crimes, serious crimes, taking place right before your eyes. And you won't even know it.

[Greg Goltz/Nebraska State Patrol Trooper] There's a lot of stuff that happens out here that the public doesn't know about.

[Mike Tobias] Such as?

[Greg Goltz] Such as drugs being transported, weapons being transported, a lot of stolen vehicles, a lot of criminal activity that occurs in the rest areas that people aren't aware of.

[Mike Tobias] Greg Goltz knows what he's talking about. He's worked I-80 for thirteen years and developed a reputation as a trooper who knows how to catch criminals in this City on Wheels. It's a reputation earned through some big busts. Last March, he and another trooper spotted a Ford Excursion driving on the shoulder of I-80 near Gibbon.

[Greg Goltz] He made some violations, made the traffic stop, and then using some techniques we asked for consent to search and used the canine at the same time, and the dog alerted.

[Mike Tobias] Here's what the dog found, 765 pounds of cocaine. The largest seizure in patrol history. It's value? About 35 million dollars. The driver was likely delivering the cocaine to the East Coast.

This bust helped make 2001 a big year for state patrol drug seizures. And in the first month of 2002, the patrol seized nearly 600 pounds of marijuana, 100 pounds of cocaine and 14 pounds of meth - all during routine traffic stops.

[Col. Tom Nesbitt/Nebraska State Patrol Superintendent] If you look at the figures that we've taken off the Interstate, and to think that we're probably just getting a very small fraction of those drugs, it is real mind-boggling to think of all the illegal drugs that are traveling up and down that Interstate.

[Mike Tobias] It's more than just drugs. Nesbitt says the number of illegal aliens being transported on I-80 is on the rise.

Some more violent crimes have also made recent headlines. Like a rest area argument that ended when Minnesota trucker Chris Stumler ran over a Virginia trucker and killed him.

And the shooting death of New York truck driver Robert Bodean at a Big Springs truck stop.

[Dorothy Halden/Big Springs Resident] When we take the privilege of having an Interstate accessible to us, we also become associated with the problems of the nation as well.

[Greg Goltz] You know a guy might take 800 pounds of marijuana to Chicago. Eventually a hundred or two hundred of that may make it back to Omaha or…

[Mike Tobias] Policing the 455 miles of Nebraska's Interstate seems like an almost impossible task for troopers like Greg Goltz. Working ten-hour shifts in cars filled with 21st bells and whistles, troopers rely on old-fashioned instinct, experience and luck.

[Greg Goltz] It's kind of a game. They try to out-smart us; we try to be smarter than them.

[Mike Tobias] The big busts often start with simple traffic stops. This morning Goltz spots a beat-up Dodge Intrepid without a front license plate. Goltz says the Intrepid is popular with drug traffickers. At 125 miles an hour he closes for a closer look.

[Greg Goltz] Illinois, he's required to have two.

[Mike Tobias] Inside are four men. The driver says he doesn't know the two men in the back, who are from Mexico, speak no English and have no identification. The front passenger is also Mexican and Goltz believes his I.D. is phony.

[Greg Goltz] Everything is pointing at they're probably… he went and he's transporting three illegal aliens to Illinois for work, probably.

I've asked for consent to search and he's given it to me. And I made sure he understood me.

[Mike Tobias] A back-up trooper arrives to watch the men, and Goltz searches the car.

[Goltz] This airbag has been cut out. You know, maybe the vehicle when it had the accident, it blew the airbag and he doesn't want to spend the money to replace it, which that could be. And that's probably what happened but this is an area we see a lot of nice compartments that are made into this area right here. They hollow it out and fill it with drugs.

A pound of cocaine would fit perfectly in this. A pound of cocaine is worth 10-15 thousand dollars. It's not always a big trunkful of marijuana. It's easy to convey small amounts. I'm pretty confident there's nothing in this one.

Well, you're free to go. I appreciate your cooperation. Thank you very much.

[Mike Tobias] Goltz sends them on their way with just a warning for the missing plate. Citing officer discretion, he decides not to pursue further his suspicions that the passengers are illegal aliens.

[Greg Goltz] That's the kind of stuff you deal with out here. You don't know. There's no law that says you and I have to walk around with identification, just like there's no law that says he does either. That's what's so sad about it is that you could run into that same situation five times a day. You truly could.

[Mike Tobias] State Patrol Carrier Enforcement officers like Vicki Streeter police the Interstate in a much different way. They're keeping an eye on commercial vehicles, mostly trucks. They watch from weigh stations and through on-the-road inspections. One goal is extending the life of the Interstate by stopping overweight trucks.

[Lt. Gerald Krolikowski/Nebraska State Patrol Carrier Enforcement] One study shows that a 80,000-pound five-axle rig, which is a legal weight limit for a five-axle rig at a certain bridge length on the axles, does the same amount of damage as something like 9,999 cars.

[Mike Tobias] New technology weighs vehicles as they pass over a piece of metal before reaching the Ashland weight station. Overweight trucks get a message to pull in for a closer scrutiny.

About four thousand trucks pass over the weigh-in-motion site each day. Streeter sees about four overweight vehicles in an eight-hour shift. Like these new buses, headed west to California but overweight even without passengers.

Carrier officers also make sure trucks and their drivers are safe.

[Sgt. Vicki Streeter/Nebraska State Patrol Carrier Enforcement] I look at every truck for safety. I look over and make sure that nothing's hanging on the truck. Their fuel caps are secure, there's no flat tires or wheels getting ready to come off or anything like that.

[Lt. Gerald Krolikowski] More of our focus for the Interstate system is placed on the driver. The running over hours, falsification of records, duty status or log books. And the fatigued drivers, or impaired drivers.

[Mike Tobias] Last year officers took 26 percent of the drivers stopped for inspection off the road.

That does seem pretty high.

[Lt. Gerald Krolikowski] Yes it does, but you've got to remember that's where our focus is, our effort.

[Mike Tobias] Interstate 80 traffic may double in the next twenty years. That means more challenges for law enforcement. The patrol is building more of these high-tech weigh stations. That will help law enforcement keep up with the task of policing commercial vehicles.

Fighting crime on the Interstate, especially drug trafficking, is another matter. Drug runners are usually a step ahead of law enforcement. Goltz says some now smuggle cocaine by mixing it with gas.

[Greg Goltz] They can do that. Because the process that kilos of cocaine are made, gasoline is not going to hurt that at all. Eventually you thin it out and it will dry out and it's right back to its powdered form of cocaine. So how am I going to ever find something like that? Well, I know they do that but that's going to be something that's going to be very difficult to ever find out here without the proper tools.

[Mike Tobias] Nesbitt says tools, training and more troopers are the answer.

[Col. Tom Nesbitt] The plan is that we continue to increase troopers. The other thing is that we plan to continually watch what training is available, what new trends are out there, so that we are absolutely state-of-the-art and understand what's going on and how people are transporting these drugs so that we can detect them.

[Mike Tobias] Call it a sign of the times. Decades ago these workers had no idea they were building an artery for drug trafficking and other crimes. They were also never imagined a few hundred miles of concrete, asphalt and steel would become the lifeblood of Nebraska, our City on Wheels.

Reporting for STATEWIDE, I'm Mike Tobias.