ABSTRACT
As the Colombian economy pulled itself together in the years following World War I, enthusiasm mounted within Antioquia for an automobile route to the sea. No longer would a mere horse trail be acceptable, and a railroad seemed increasingly impractical and unnecessary. Work was inaugurated with elaborate fanfare on June 10, 1926, with the Bishop of Antioquia blessing a crowbar at a ceremony at the end of the streetcar line in San Cristobal, a village across the valley from Medellín where the work commenced. An Assembly subcommittee in 1929 had answered complaints that further investment in the Carretera al Mar threatened to siphon funds from other needed road projects in the department and bring economic ruin to the departmental railroad recently completed between the Rio Magdalena and Medellín. Completion of the last stretch of the Carretera al Mar, topographically the easiest, had to await the end of World War II.
