federally owned areas built up so rapidly that, by 1916, the OPR was maintaining 160 miles of road, constructing 170 miles and making surveys and plans for yet another 477 miles—a total program that was spread over 12 States and Alaska, and which exceeded the programs of a number of State highway departments. This far-flung program would soon receive a major boost from Congress in the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916.
Publicity Adds Momentum to the Good Roads Movement
Most of the OPR’s engineers were as much at home on the lecture platform as in the field or the laboratory. The special agents spent most of their time on such work, and they and the Washington Office staff were in great demand as speakers at road conventions and meetings of trade associations and professional groups. Director Page supplied lecturers only upon invitation and then only upon assurance that the meeting had been properly advertised and that the attendance would justify the expense. He was never able to satisfy the demand, even though he doubled and then trebled the number of men assigned to the work. In 1906 the OPR engineers gave about 100 lectures in 14 States. By 1912, 27 lecturers were giving 1,139 lectures which were heard by 208,472 persons in 37 States.[1]
To reach even more people, Page, in 1907, launched an information campaign directed at the rural population. Twenty-five hundred county newspapers co-operated by publishing short practical articles on road construction and maintenance written by the OPR staff. Through this program, Page estimated that he could reach up to 10 million people a year.[2][3]
Important as it was, the OPR publicity was only a small part of a nationwide outpouring of good roads propaganda. The magazine, Good Roads, founded by the League of American Wheelmen, was still the leading publication in the good roads field, but it had many competitors. In 1908 the American Automobile Association (AAA) launched the American Motorist to speak for the rapidly increasing number of automobile owners. Hardly a month passed without an article on good roads appearing in the influential Saturday Evening Post or in Harper’s Magazine, and between 1910 and 1915, it is safe to say that no national issue received greater coverage in the country and city newspapers.
Show Business in the Road Business
In 1908 Congress authorized a Government exhibit at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and specifically provided that the Office of Public Roads should be represented. For its part of the exhibit, the OPR prepared a series of scale models, complete with miniature machinery, showing every aspect of roadbuilding. These were supplemented with a handbook, a series of moving pictures and stereopticon slides and a lecture on roads.
The Seattle exhibit of 1909 was so successful that the OPR made up several others like it which were shown at national expositions and fairs in 1910. These boosted the demand still further, so Page arranged to transfer a professional model maker from the Smithsonian Institution to augment the OPR’s effort. The models were loaned to various State fairs and expositions, which agreed to cover the cost of installation and transportation. The exhibits were accompanied by an OPR road expert to show the slides and give lectures. Between 1910 and 1917, the exhibits were shown at over 100 places and were seen by some 2½ million people.
In 1911 the Pennsylvania Railroad offered to provide a “Road Improvement Train” to carry the OPR exhibit throughout the State of Pennsylvania, and arrangements were made with the State Highway Department and the Pennsylvania State College to sponsor the tour. The train consisted of an exhibit car, a lecture car and two flat cars carrying full-sized crushers, rollers, graders and even split-log drags. The train stopped at 165 places during its 2-month tour. The crowds were so large in the larger towns that the lectures had to be held in court houses and opera houses. Over 53,000 people saw the exhibits and heard the lectures.[4]
Not to be outdone by the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Southern and five other eastern and midwestern railroads petitioned the OPR to outfit Road Improvement Trains for them, and these took to the road in 1911 and 1912, carrying the good roads gospel to some 163,000 people in 650 towns. The last Good Roads Train in American history toured the State of Iowa in 1916.
The American Highway Association
By 1910 there were literally scores of organizations in the United States devoted to the promotion of good roads. A few of these were strong, effective, and national in scope. The American Automobile Association founded by the motorists in 1902 and the American Road Makers, bringing together State engineers, road contractors and road machinery manufacturers, were in this category. However, many of the good roads associations were primarily pressure groups whose purpose was to get improved roads by influencing legislation. Most of these had no dues-paying members but depended on commercial interests—railroads, materials producers, automobile manufacturers—for financial support.
The interior of the exhibit car of the Road Improvement Train.
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