While David Spindler is fond of correcting the myth that the Great Wall was an elevated highway for guards and soldiers, the Modern Mechanix blog reprints a 1931 article about plans by the KMT government to build a 1500-mile long elevated roadway a top the wall running west from Beijing. (Click here for the article: Page 1 and Page 2)
After giving a bit of Great Wall history and fun facts (including an interesting map of the Wall superimosed on the US) the article gushes:
With a smooth motoroad laid on top of the wall its value to China would be enormous; for besides its unquestioned military value, enabling the government to stamp out incessant banditry in the provinces (Ed. Note: I wonder who that might be…), it would do much toward the rehabilitation of those who are isolated in this mysterious interior country, and who sometimes starve to death because food, plentiful on the coast, cannot be transported inland in time.
h/t CDT.
[...] The Great Wall of China to be Motor Highway – 1931 article about KMT plans to turn the Great Wall into a highway (h/t Granite Studio) [...]