{"id":2483,"date":"2022-03-25T19:38:24","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T19:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2483"},"modified":"2022-03-28T19:48:49","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T19:48:49","slug":"from-the-vaults-american-roads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2483","title":{"rendered":"From the Vaults: American Roads"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Vaults:\u00a0 American Roads<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Among the many topics covered by Simon Winchester in his book <\/span>The Men Who United the States<\/span><\/i> (2013, Harper-Perennial Books), one that fascinated me a lot was the history of American roads.\u00a0 Winchester notes that at the turn of the nineteenth century, 96 percent of travel in America was done by railroad (another interesting segment of his book).\u00a0 As the country made the transition to becoming an automobile dependent society, passenger rail service declined and a period of historic road building began.\u00a0 Perhaps we have grown so used to the endless ribbons of highway we travel, we have forgotten that much of our current network of roads and highways only came together over the last seventy years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The short version of this tale is summarized by Winchester\u2019s statement, \u201cThe story of most early American roads is much the same:\u00a0 [The earliest trails were made] first by the Native Americans, [and then taken over by] the soldiers, then the mails, then settlers, then commerce, and finally something approaching permanence. \u00a0 By the middle of the eighteenth century, a network of such trails, all of them dirt, few of them maintained, and nearly all of them notoriously difficult to travel along, knitted the entire eastern half of the nation loosely together.\u00a0 They allowed for the slow, halting, and unsure passage of men and horses, Conestoga wagons, and buffalo carts.\u201d \u00a0 The haphazard nature of road building persisted until Lewis and Clark returned from the Pacific Northwest and president Thomas Jefferson brought the resources of the federal government to bear.\u00a0 Jefferson\u2019s dream of at least one highway stretching from coast to coast began to take shape in the east at Cumberland, Maryland and by the time the first 600 miles had been constructed, it had come to be called the United States National Road.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The actual grunt work clearing trees and grubbing stumps started in May 1811 and four more presidents would occupy the White House by the time the last load of gravel was rolled in Vandalia, Illinois twenty-eight years later.\u00a0 The War Department took a keen interest in the construction of an enduring road that would allow troops to be sent across the land with great speed.\u00a0 The generals in charge encouraged the contractors to incorporate new ideas in road construction put forth by Scotsman John McAdam in a book he published in 1816.\u00a0 McAdam tossed the cardinal rule of road building out (which held that roads should be made with big slabs of rock) in favor of compacting a two inch layer of smaller stones on top of a layer of slightly larger stones.\u00a0 McAdam decreed the pressure from the four inch wide wagon wheels passing over the surface would be enough to crush them together with no need for any other binder like cement.\u00a0 If this sounds like McAdam is the patron saint of <\/span>macadam<\/span><\/i> roads, then you get the picture.\u00a0 With federal assistance now tied to building lasting roads and McAdam\u2019s playbook in hand, the pattern of road construction was cast for decades to come.\u00a0 Improvements in the process would be made as manual labor gave way to mechanized earth movers, but a true \u2018national road system\u2019 was still in the distant future.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By the end of World War I, there were nearly three million miles of public roads in use in the United States with only one tenth, or about 369,000 miles, of them paved.\u00a0 As Winchester says, \u201cAmerica\u2019s roads were at the time a national disgrace, but there were plenty of them.\u201d\u00a0 With the rise of the new fangled horseless carriage, groups of enthusiastic car drivers began clamoring for some sort of proper federally funded roads plan.\u00a0 As with the earlier United States National Road, the War Department helped move things along.\u00a0 War game scenarios concerning an attack, say on the west coast, had the generals asking pertinent questions like, \u201cHow long would it take to mobilize a big battle force and get them to the other side of the country?\u201d\u00a0 A young Major named Dwight Eisenhower heard table talk about a possible cross country trip to test whether such a mass troop movement could be accomplished by road instead of by rail.\u00a0 He was intrigued and volunteered to accompany the proposed expedition as an observer \u2018just for a lark.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A three mile long column of military vehicles gathered at a granite monument on the South Lawn of the White House.\u00a0 It consisted of seventy-nine vehicles:\u00a0 Thirty-four heavy trucks, oil and water pumpers, a mobile blacksmith shop, a Caterpillar tractor, staff observation cars, searchlight carriers, kitchen trailers, a mobile hospital and other wheeled tag-a-longs like trailers.\u00a0 By the time the convoy reached Lincoln Park in San Francisco, nine vehicles had been wrecked and 237 of the original 258 original soldiers, 24 officers, and 15 observers were left.\u00a0 West of Missouri, the roads were basically nonexistent until they reached California.\u00a0 It had taken them sixty-two days to make the crossing and had they actually met an enemy along the way, more than likely they would not have claimed victory in any battles that may have been fought.\u00a0 The <\/span>U.S. Army Transcontinental Convoy of 1919<\/span><\/i> left an indelible impression on Major Eisenhower.\u00a0 They had crossed 3,251 miles of the country at an average speed of 5.6 miles per hour.\u00a0 Ike decided then and there this was a project that had to be tackled sooner rather than later and in his mind, the first seeds of the interstate highway system were planted. \u00a0 It would not be advanced significantly until Eisenhower became the president.\u00a0 Today, the project (formally named Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) is now complete (more or less).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Like any major infrastructure project, \u2018complete\u2019 means \u2018in place\u2019 with constant upgrades, improvements, and reconstructions being the rule of the day.\u00a0 Just before this article was started, President Biden gave a speech in Pennsylvania about America\u2019s need to upgrade its infrastructure.\u00a0 Ironically, his talk in Pittsburgh took place not too far from the Fern Hollow highway bridge that collapsed without warning on January 28, 2022.\u00a0 With that kind of exclamation point to add to his proposed plan, the collapse illustrates how desperately the United States needs to invest in our national assets like bridges, highways, dams, electrical grid, and railroads.\u00a0 It is hard to fathom those who are fighting the legislation proposed to deal with our crumbling infrastructure.\u00a0 When a vital piece of legislation is deemed \u2018too expensive\u2019, the nickel squeezers in congress are placing an extremely low price tag on the lives of their constituents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The idea for the Interstate Highway System may have been Ike\u2019s, but we have Thomas MacDonald to thank for making it a reality a quarter of a century after Ike\u2019s epiphany.\u00a0 MacDonald (1881-1957) was born in Leadville, Colorado.\u00a0 Leadville is probably one of the best known frontier towns as it was here that Oscar Wilde noticed a sign in a bar where he was giving a lecture that said, \u201cPlease do not shoot the pianist.\u00a0 He is doing his best.\u201d\u00a0 MacDonald\u2019s interest in roads came early after his family relocated to Iowa and he observed his father fighting to deliver lumber or corn to the Minneapolis & St. Louis railway station over roads that could only be described as \u2018quagmires\u2019 during certain seasons.\u00a0 He vowed early in life to \u201clearn the craft of building highways\u201d which would in due time give him the skills to lay the groundwork for the Interstate Highway System.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As bicycles improved and the newfangled horseless carriages evolved, large segments of the American population began demanding better roads.\u00a0 It did one little good to have the freedom afforded by a set of wheels if there were no usable roads to travel.\u00a0 In 1894, the American government decided it was time to help farmers like Mr. MacDonald \u2018out of the mud\u2019.\u00a0 With a modest $10,000 allocation, Congress created the Office of Road Inquiry, the first proper office and staff dedicated to improving roads and road construction.\u00a0 According to Winchester, they used their office to jump-start the process in a most imaginative way:\u00a0 \u201cThey assembled a number of trains;\u00a0 filled each with engineers and road-building equipment;\u00a0 sent them out to small, isolated towns throughout the country;\u00a0 and built small half-mile-long sample roads for demonstration.\u00a0 They were known as object-lesson roads or seed roads, examples of what could and should be done.\u00a0 The results were predictable.\u00a0 Scores of local people would bring their bicycles or cars or farm trucks and would bump along through the ruts and mud pools until they reached the edge of the newly built seed road –\u00a0 and then sailed serenely across something that suddenly felt as smooth as velvet, as easy to ride along as if it had been made of glass.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Upon his graduation from farm school in Iowa, Mr. MacDonald\u2019s (no one was allowed to call him by his surname, not even his wife.\u00a0 He was also okay with being called \u2018Chief\u2019), interest and talents in road building got him handpicked to run a commission to study that state\u2019s roads.\u00a0 As he advanced the cause of good roads in Iowa, he came to the attention of those funding the expanded ORI, now known as the Bureau of Public Roads.\u00a0 The Bureau was still attached to the Department of Agriculture and the two lackluster \u2018time servers\u2019 in charge had failed to spend its $75 million budget, managing to build only twenty miles of new roads in the whole country.\u00a0 This was pale progress compared to the five hundred miles of paved road MacDonald had overseen in Iowa.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Thomas Harris MacDonald took the reins in 1919 and held the post for the next thirty-four years.\u00a0 Winchester describes him as an, \u201cIron-willed curmudgeonly martinet and \u2018The Chief\u2019 wielded unprecedented influence with the seven presidents he served while supervising the creation of the nation\u2019s present highway system.\u201d\u00a0 If the 3.5 million miles of roads built under his authority weren\u2019t enough, he also oversaw the building of the Alaska Highway.\u00a0 MacDonald explained his goal of building smooth, well drained roads as follows:\u00a0 \u201cWe will be able to drive out of any county seat in the United States at thirty-five miles per hour and drive into any other county seat – and never crack a spring.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One may not think much about the way highway numbers are assigned, but the system proposed by The Chief was, as Winchester describes it, \u201cElegantly simple:\u00a0 North-south federal roads would have odd numbers;\u00a0 east-west, even.\u00a0 All signs on these roads would be the same:\u00a0 a plain white shield edged with black and painted with a black route number.\u00a0 The lowest odd number, Route 1, would be on the East Coast, the highest would be Route 101, now the maddeningly congested commuter corridor in California. (note:\u00a0 Having been on the 101 in Los Angeles many times, I can personally vouch for this last statement)\u00a0 So far as the east-west ocean-to-ocean routes were concerned, Route 2 was in the north and Route 90 down near the Mexican border.\u00a0 Roads ending in the number 5 were major routes, as were those ending in zero, routes 30 and 40 becoming of legendary importance (note:\u00a0 Winchester does not explain why).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Great Diagonal Way running from Chicago to Los Angeles would become one of the most fabled of the numbered routes.\u00a0 MacDonald\u2019s system would have assigned Route 62 to the highway crossing their state, but the residents of Kentucky wanted the more important sounding \u2018Route 60\u2019.\u00a0 Route 60 had already been assigned to the GDW causing a major drama in the Bluegrass State.\u00a0 When one of MacDonald\u2019s engineers in Oklahoma remembered that route #66 was still available, the Great Diagonal Way was reassigned Route 66 and Kentucky claimed their coveted Route 60.\u00a0 I can not say I know much about the highways crossing Kentucky, but I can state without a doubt there was never a popular show with a catchy theme song called <\/span>Route 60.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Perhaps you need to be of a certain age to remember \u2018<\/span>get your kicks on Route 66<\/span><\/i>\u2019, but even today there are a lot of nostalgia seekers who choose to travel Route 66\u2026.just for kicks.\u00a0 It is a ghost of its former self (\u201cnow a relic, ill repaired, half broken, and much diverted\u201d) but the lore lives on.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Think about the genius of MacDonald\u2019s numbering conventions the next time you point your vehicle south from Ontonagon on US 45.\u00a0 At the head of River Street, there is a large wooden historical marker pointing out the beginning and end of this oft traveled route.\u00a0 Just south of Watersmeet, US 45 crosses US 2 and if one takes a right turn, they can follow this route all the way to the Pacific Ocean in Washington state (and a lovely drive it is, I am told).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Near the end of the Depression, The Chief was summoned to Washington to meet with the fifth president he was to serve.\u00a0 President Roosevelt had always been a staunch supporter of MacDonald\u2019s work but in 1937, the president was worried that the road system would not be able to cope with the \u2018exponentially increasing number of vehicles\u2019 plying the American highways.\u00a0 Roosevelt drew six heavy lines across a large map (three running north-south and three running east-west although he later added two more north-south lines).\u00a0 He told MacDonald these eight roads \u2018would be wide divided highways with limited access and without any intersections or stop lights, which would enable vehicles to travel for hundreds of miles at the highest speeds\u2019.\u00a0 The \u2018where\u2019 and \u2018how much\u2019 questions were put in The Chief\u2019s hands and \u2018the effects\u2019 would not be known until much later.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0World War II and much squabbling about plans and budgets would push the start of construction back twenty years.\u00a0 Ike may have been the first to recognize the need in 1919 (and many attribute the Interstate Highway System to him), but the vastly improved system laid out in 1937 had nothing to do with Ike.\u00a0 Okay, that is not entirely true because Ike would eventually sign the Federal-Aid Highway Act in June of 1956 to launch the modern era of freeway building and construction that did (finally) begin in earnest during his presidency.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0MacDonald and Roosevelt disagreed on many parts of the plan:\u00a0 FDR wanted to pay for them with tolls, The Chief wanted a gas tax.\u00a0 MacDonald did not think it was worth it to build these vast roadways across sparsely populated areas, but Roosevelt insisted they would (and did) provide work for local men and stimulate the local economies coming out of the Depression.\u00a0 Neither saw some of the sociological effects these massive building projects would bring.\u00a0 Recent studies have shown the razing of poor urban areas to make way for new freeways had caused social upheavals by splitting ethnic communities in half or relocating them completely.\u00a0 It is good to see some of these ills are now being addressed as newer upgrades in the Interstate Highway System are being planned to not only avoid these practices, but to also reunite some of these severed communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My folks told me I was too young to remember when some of the highways we traveled in Upper Michigan were still unpaved.\u00a0 What I do remember, however, is being fascinated every time we went somewhere and got \u2018stuck\u2019 in a construction zone.\u00a0 Most folks hate being stopped by a flag-man or automated stop light at a construction zone, but I still enjoy seeing a new segment of highway being created.\u00a0 If the delay irritates you, think about traveling across the country at an average speed of 5.6 MPH like Ike did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 \u00a0If there is a more iconic song about roads, I can’t put a title to it – Thanks Willie!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Vaults:\u00a0 American Roads   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Among the many topics covered by Simon Winchester in his book The Men Who United the States (2013, Harper-Perennial Books), one that fascinated me a lot was the history of American roads.\u00a0 Winchester notes that at the turn of the nineteenth century, 96 percent of travel in America was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2483"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions\/2487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}