American Scientist the Magazine of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society

A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society This reprint of a copyrighted article is provided for personal and noncommercial use only. For any other use, including reprinting and reproduction, please contact the author at [email protected]. Engineering On the Road Henry Petroski n 1919 Dwight D. Eisenhower, days. The first woman to drive across Ithen a young lieutenant colonel The Interstate the country was Alice Huyler Ramsey, in the U.S. Army, rode in a convoy of who with three other women in her military vehicles that traveled from green Maxwell made it from New York Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. It Highway System to San Francisco in only 41 days in 1909. was the service’s first transcontinental The idea for a transcontinental road, journey by motor vehicle, and the pur- turns 50 this year as opposed to a transcontinental trip, pose of the exercise was to promote was put forward in 1913 by Carl Gra- the army’s Motor Transport Corps ham Fisher, builder of a motor speed- and demonstrate its defense mobility. way on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Almost 300 enlisted men and officers faster than a brisk walk. Although ex- Fisher argued at the time that Amer- rode by motorcycle, car and truck in a cruciatingly slow by today’s standards, ica’s highways were “built chiefly of caravan that stretched for three miles. it was the best that the caravan could politics,” when the “proper material is Vehicles were draped with bunting of do at the time. The journey had to be crushed rock or concrete.” He proposed red, white and blue, and were accom- undertaken in the heat of summer to a “coast-to-coast rock highway” that panied by a band sponsored by the ensure that the western mountains would run from Times Square in New Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, were passable. The season, however, York to Golden Gate Park in San Fran- which no doubt saw an opportunity also meant that what roads there were cisco, and he hoped that it might be to promote land travel and transporta- would be muddy after rain. Vehicles completed in time for the opening of tion in peace time as well as war. would overheat and otherwise break the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915. The convoy of 81 vehicles, which down. There were accidents to deal Fisher proposed that the rock high- was seen off from Washington on July 7 with. Roads, where they existed, were way be funded by “automobile bar- with speeches from the Secretary of War often so rough that no significant speed ons” like Henry Ford, but Ford op- and numerous senators, took 62 days to could be achieved. Even the better posed the idea, arguing that if private cover 3,250 miles through Maryland, roads were frequently interrupted by industry began to pay for good roads Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, rivers, which were often crossed by fer- the government would never be ex- Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Ne- ry. If there was a bridge, it was often too pected to do so. Henry Joy, president vada and, finally, California. There were light for military vehicles to use with- of the Packard Motor Car Company naturally crowds of well-wishers along out breaking it. Thus, it did not take a and one of the supporters of Fisher’s the way, and there were speeches and great leap of the imagination for Lt. Col. idea, suggested that the road be named festivities befitting the arrival of such Eisenhower to conclude that the United the Lincoln Highway and be dedi- a parade of equipment in the towns States would benefit greatly from an cated to the revered president. In this it passed through. Perhaps not to be improved system of highways. His feel- way, the federal government might be outdone by Goodyear, the tire magnate ings on the matter would intensify dur- persuaded to divert to the highway Harvey Firestone welcomed the travel- ing World War II, when he witnessed project the $1.7 million intended for ing army to his estate in Akron, where firsthand the great advantages of the a marble memorial to be erected in “a covey of young ladies dressed in gay German Autobahn. All these experienc- Washington. That did not occur, but frocks treated the men with a magnifi- es would inform Eisenhower’s policy with the Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916, cent feast.” making when he became president. funds began to be made available to Gaiety and politicking may have the states—but not directly to private slowed somewhat the progress of the Named Routes roads—on a matching basis. convoy, but it nevertheless did set what Although it may have been encum- According to the Wannamaker Di- was, for the time and circumstances, the bered by heavy equipment and hoopla, ary for 1917, 13 transcontinental high- remarkable pace of 58 miles per day, or the army convoy that so negatively im- way “through routes” were then being about five miles per hour—not much pressed Eisenhower was far from the planned—about evenly divided between first transcontinental driving experi- east-west and north-south routes—but Henry Petroski is Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor ence. In 1903, Horatio Nelson Jackson they were only “in the first stages of per- of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at drove with his personal mechanic from manent improvement.” In addition to Duke University. Address: Box 90287, Durham, San Francisco to New York, paving the the Lincoln Highway, east-west routes NC 27708-0287 way on ways that were not paved, in 63 included the Pike’s Peak Ocean to Ocean 396 American Scientist, Volume Copyright © 2006 by Henry Petroski. Requests for permission to reprint or reproduce this article should be directed to the author at [email protected]. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library Presidential Eisenhower D. Dwight Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library Presidential Eisenhower D. Dwight Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower (above, right)—shown here with Major Brett (left) and Harvey Firestone (middle)—partici- pated in a 1919 transcontinental military convoy. The journey took 62 days and entailed considerable hardship (right). The experi- ence—along with seeing the German Auto- bahn during World War II—would inform Eisenhower’s decision, more than 35 years later, to push for the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Highway (New York to California), the and solutions had been sought. By 1917, jor east-west routes with numbers that National Old Trails (Washington, D.C., the New York State Highway Commis- are multiples of ten, with U.S. 10 being area to Los Angeles), Trail to the Sun- sion introduced a color code for identi- the most northerly route and U.S. 90 set and Santa Fe Trail (New York to San fying main routes throughout the state. the most southerly. Major north-south Diego), and the Old Spanish Trail (St. Bands of color on telegraph and tele- routes, of which there were expected to Augustine to San Diego). North-south phone poles and other stationary ob- be many more than east-west, were to routes included the Atlantic Highway jects, like bridges, distinguished classes have numbers ending in a 1 or a 5. Thus (Calais, Maine, to Miami), Pacific High- of routes: Red indicated a principal it was the location and direction of U.S. way (Vancouver to San Diego), the Di- east-west route, blue a north-south, and 1 that gave it that designation—and xie Highway (Chicago to Miami) and yellow a diagonal route. In so marking not, as is commonly stated, that it was the Jefferson Highway (New Orleans to its roads, New York joined Massachu- the first national highway. By AASHO’s Minneapolis-St. Paul). A “diagonal au- setts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and ordering principle, U.S. 1 ran along the tomobile road across the country” was New Hampshire in the practice, there- east coast between Maine and Florida; also in the planning stages. It was to be by making regional driving and touring U.S. 101 was the west-coast highway the longest on the continent and was to more easily accomplished. At the same between California and Washington. be given the pedestrian name of Savan- time, Wisconsin began replacing named Under this scheme, the Lincoln High- nah to Seattle Highway. At the time such trail and highway signs, which often way lost its identity as a single route, plans were being put forth, there were consisted of little more than a distinc- different sections of it carrying different 3.5 million automobiles and a quarter tive color band painted on a telephone numbered designations, but devotees million trucks waiting to use them, but pole, with numbered route markers of a installed thousands of roadside mark- these numbers were dwarfed by a na- distinctive shape. ers identifying it as the highway dedi- tional population of 21 million horses. cated to Abraham Lincoln. By 1925, there were numerous named Take a Number President Franklin Delano Roosevelt roads throughout the country. Individ- In 1925, the American Association of had a direct and personal interest in the ual states developed segments of these State Highway Officials began to ra- condition of America’s roads. He was routes that maximized travel within tionalize the system of roads and road an ardent automobile driver, and when state boundaries, thereby increasing signs across the nation. Henceforth, U.S. paralysis in his legs restricted his ability the local and regional benefits of tour- highways—a designation that was not to drive, he designed a system of le- ist dollars.

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