The story of transport begins with the all-American myth of the frontier as a chance to explore new lands and find new opportunities. Through the pictures of LIFE photographers (Margaret Bourke-White, Andreas Feininger, Carl Mydans and Alfred Eisenstaedt among others) we follow the rapid pace of change in our society: the carefree first trips to the countryside, the immensity of American roads through the silence of the deserts, the arrival of urban transport, aeroplanes over the cities, then the war, the euphoria of the 1950s and the dream of space flight. The images come with passages by great writers, from Saint-Exupéry to Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac.