Lincoln Highway Strip Map, 1921 (Library of Congress)Further measures were needed after WWI, since the 2 million
vehicles of 1915 had exploded to 10 million by 1920. Federal action was
forthcoming with the passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1921, which granted
aid for the construction of both interstate and inter-county highways.16
Matching funds were allocated to the states according to population, area, and
mileage of rural and mail routes. State highway departments became responsible
for much of the maintenance of these new roads, but benefited from federal
monies that supported construction at $15,000 per mile.
From Wiki:
The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921, also called the Phipps Act (Pub. L. 67–87, 42 Stat. 212), sponsored by Sen. Lawrence C. Phipps (R) of Colorado, defined the Federal Aid Road program to develop an immense national highway system. The plan was crafted by the head of the National Highway Commission, Thomas Harris MacDonald and was the first coherent plan for the nation's future roads. President Warren Harding signed the act into law on November 9, 1921.L. I. Hewes opened the Western Headquarters Office of the Bureau of Public Roads to administer federal-aid highway and direct federal highway construction programs in 11 western states, including Alaska and Hawaii. It provided federal 50–50 matching funds for state highway building up to 7 percent of roads statewide.[1] By the end of 1921, more than $75 million in aid had been given to the states.
In 1922, the Bureau of Public Roads commissioned Gen. John J. Pershing to draw up the Pershing Map for construction purposes and to give the government a clear understanding of which roads in the U.S. were the most important in the event of war. The "Pershing Map" was the first official topographic road map of the United States. From it, the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia was begun in 1922. By 1923, the roads authorized by the act had been completed.
Two Lane Black Top, or Concrete if there is
Money
The 1921 act resulted in employment for some 250,000
construction workers. Most significantly however, was the transformation of
road building techniques. Until the early twentieth century, best practice road
building meant the construction of macadam surfaces, derived from the work of
early nineteenth century English engineers Loudon Macadam and Thomas Telford.17
Using small stones and the dust of these stones as a binder during a compaction
process, road building had been gradually mechanized during the late nineteenth
century with the introduction of steamrollers, rock crushers, graders and
tractors. Macadam surfaces, however, while wholly adequate for bicycles, could
not withstand heavy automobile and truck traffic. Attempts were made to tar the
macadamized surface to improve its durability, but ultimately the widespread
adoption of concrete and “black top” supplanted macadam roadways.
The first
concrete road surfaces were widely adopted in California beginning in 1910.
Headed by Austin B. Fletcher, the California Highway Commission pioneered
banked concrete thoroughfares and curbing. A key innovation was the development
of the paving train, where trucks and large drum mixers supplied materials to
spreaders, levelers, and finishers pulled along on rails. And while concrete
had its critics, particularly those who argued that it was too expensive for
rural roads, in the end it became the material of choice in road building in
heavily trafficked areas.18 Alternatively, there was asphalt, and
its plants also became larger and fed bituminous pavers that spread in lane
widths a heated bituminous-aggregate mix.19
By 1923,
the Bureau of Public Roads, under the direction of Thomas H. MacDonald, planned
a tentative network of arterial highways that included all cities of 50,000 or
more. Some 350,000 miles of highways were envisioned, in which even numbers
were designated for east-west routes and odd numbers for north-south.
The question
was how this ambitious internal improvements program would be funded, a
critical one both in terms of future economic growth and national defense. As
it turned out, the answer was to collect fees from registrations and license
applications, and in part from gasoline taxes that began to be levied in 1919.20
Road mileage doubled between 1920 and 1930 and then doubled again between 1930
and 1940.
Until the
closed car became more popular in the mid-1920s, this pioneering stage of
automobile and highway history was one of pure exhilaration, so well expressed
by Drake Hokanson:
The breeze rushing through the open
windshield of an automobile was stronger than that on a boat or in a buggy, and
the hiss of moving air blended smoothly with the sound of a powerful motor. It
carried the perfume of motoring; the smells of rubber, oil, and gasoline, and
the scents of woodland, river, prairie, and sage. It was this wind with the
smell of someplace else in it that urged the traveler on, that made it clear
that you were on the road for somewhere.21
By the
mid-1920s, there were numerous interstate highways, although they were uneven
in terms of surface quality and designated by name rather than by number. For
example, the Dixie Highway, which connected travelers from Detroit to Florida,
ended in Miami. Another road that ended in Miami was the Atlantic Coastal
Highway, which began in Quebec City, Canada, and passed through New England,
New York City, and Philadelphia. There was also the Capital Highway, starting
in Washington D.C. and connecting the capitals of Virginia, North Carolina, and
South Carolina. Another popular road was the Lee Highway, having its origins in
New York City, passing through the District of Columbia, then running through
Virginia, eastern Tennessee, Birmingham, Alabama, and then New Orleans, where
it became part of the Robert E. Lee Transcontinental Highway that connected the
Southern U.S. with San Diego and Los Angeles. Other routes went by name such as
the Jackson Highway, the Jefferson Highway, and the Old Spanish Trail.22
This
network of privately-inspired interstate highways that had crisscrossed the
nation had become so complex that in 1924 the American Association of State
Highway Officials (AASHO) petitioned the United States Department of
Agriculture to systematize the situation by instituting some kind of numbering
system. The following year, the Joint Board of State and Federal Highway
officials was created and within eighteen months came up with a solution. In
November 1926, the joint board held a meeting at Pinehurst, North Carolina. In
attendance were many prominent public officials representing national, state
and local governments.
Soon a plan
was publicly announced. It called for the designation of all east-west routes
with even numbers and all north-south routes with odd numbers. U.S. highways
10, 20, 30, and 40 stretched westward across the northern states, and highways
50, 60, 70, 72, 74, 78, 80 and 90 ran east-west through the southern states.
Generally, the numbers given to north-south highways were lower than fifty, but
at times these highways intersected, and thus the previous older interstate
routes did not acquire only one number. For example, the Capital Highway for
the most part became U.S. 1; the Atlantic Coastal Highway U.S. 17; the Dixie
Highway, with dual routes through the South, became U.S. 41, U.S. 27, U.S. 25,
and U.S. 441.
Not only
were the roads standardized in terms of the signs that governed its use, but in
their physical nature. The key agency in creating uniformity was the Committee
on Standards of the American Association of State Highway Officials. In 1928
that group mandated 10-foot wide lanes, 6-inch concrete pavement, 8-foot
shoulders, and 1-inch highway crowns.
By 1927, a
new classification for the nation’s highways was in place, and the many routes
that ran through the country were absorbed into the new national interstate
network. National standardized black and white signs in the form of a shield
emblazoned with the route number in the center replaced the colorful and
regionally identifiable route markers that had at first marked the course of
the many highways that had crossed the nation. Named highways, once so
important, are now largely forgotten.
State Library of Louisiana During the
late 1920s, Louisiana was one state that whose drivers finally climbed out of
the mud (or “gumbo”), and its history illustrates not only the fact that the
automobile preceded road development but also that politics proved critical to
the story.23 Like the rest of the nation, Louisiana witnessed an
upsurge in car ownership beginning in the early 1920s. For example, in 1922,
there were 122,000 motor vehicles registered in the state, but by 1924 that
figure had risen to 178,000.24 In 1920, a state highway commission
had been established, but it was poorly funded and staffed, and the state’s
elite patrician leadership was conservative in raising the monies necessary to
build a comprehensive state road system. Given the climatic and geographical
difficulties associated with the state – for example, there were more than
5,000 streams and rivers in Louisiana – its citizens were limited in where they
could take the new cars they had purchased. In Orleans Parish alone there were
43,000 vehicles, and yet there was no road to the east that connected New
Orleans with the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The situation changed dramatically,
however, with the coming of Huey Long to the Governor’s mansion in 1928. The
“Kingfish’s” clever political maneuvering resulted in first raising the
necessary state funds to build good roads, and then the will to build them
throughout the state. Long hired some of the best highway engineers in the
country, raised the gasoline tax and floated state bonds, and put more than
8,000 men to work in the process. In a 1929 Louisiana Highway Commission
report, it was asserted that “Power Creates Wealth,” and that “Good Roads
Throughout Louisiana Provide for a Wider Distribution of Power.” Furthermore,
The automobile has revolutionized
transportation methods and eliminated distance. Combined with improved
highways, the automobile has made friends and neighbors of us all, removed
imaginary barriers and provided a sound foundation on which to build for
happiness, prosperity, and permanent development.25
During the
Long administration, thousands of miles of improved roadways were constructed,
but three projects stand out. First, east of New Orleans, the Chef Menteur
Highway connecting New Orleans to Mississippi was completed. Secondly, the
Airline Highway connecting New Orleans to Baton Rouge shortened the driving
distance between the state’s major urban center of New Orleans and its capital
of Baton Rouge.26 Thirdly, a landmark achievement was the erection
of a bridge across the Mississippi River at Jefferson, west of New Orleans. The
Huey Long Bridge, with four lanes for motor vehicle traffic and railroad tracks
in the middle, remains an adventure to cross today. Yet at its dedication in
late 1935, the bridge provided a critical connecting point for the Jefferson
Highway, Old Spanish Trail, Louisiana Purchase Highway, Colonial Highway,
Mississippi Scenic Highway, and the Pershing Highway.27
Of all the
highways with U.S. number designations, one, Route 66, truly stands out in
American culture.28 Spanning from Chicago to Santa Monica, the
“Mother Road,” was immortalized in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Its
road food, typified by the fare served by the Big Texan restaurant outside of
Amarillo, and roadside architecture, like the Wigwam Village Motel in Holbrook,
Arizona, has given Route 66 a mystique without equal. Route 66 was the idea of
Cyrus Steven Avery, a businessman from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who became president of
the Associated Highways Association in 1921 and State Highway Commissioner in
1923. He perceptively understood that highways meant business and tourism, and
that the better the highways the better the business. To this day, with the
rise of nostalgia about the “Mother Road,” Route 66 is all about tourism. A
journey down Route 66 takes one to a different time in American life, before
McDonald’ s and fast food, before the homogeneity found on the interstate
confronted travelers.29
Nostalgia
for the open road of the past, however, should not blind us to its historical
realities. For one thing, Route 66 was known as “bloody” 66, because it was so
dangerous and so many died on that road. And as Steinbeck so astutely
described, it was a road not only leading to the opportunities awaiting the
beleaguered upon reaching California, but also a place where opportunism,
exploitation, and disappointment occurred. With dilapidated cars and worn out
tires, fear was at the hearts of drivers and passengers alike, who out of a
sense of survival became one with their rides:
Listen
to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands
on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift
lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old
jalopy with all your senses; for a change of tone, a variation of the rhythm
that may mean – a week here? That rattle – that’s tappets. Don’t hurt a bit.
Tappets can rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But that thudding as
the car moves along – can’t hear that – just kind of feel it. Maybe oil isn’t
getting’ someplace. Maybe a bearing’s startin’ to go. Jesus, if it’s a bearing,
what’ll we do? Money’s goin’ fast.30
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