The idea of constructing a road up Whiteface Mountain was first conceived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Marcellus Leonard, an entrepreneur from Saranac Lake. The plans for the highway began to take shape in the 1920s when the land for the road was given by its owner to the state of New York on the condition that it would be named after America's Great War veterans. The road was later renamed to honor veterans from all wars. Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the dedication for the highway in 1929.