Skip to contentU.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration
Home > About FHWA > Highway History > FHWA By Day

FHWA By Day

A Look at the History of the Federal Highway Administration
Table of Contents - Previous Day - Next Day
August 9
1954 Commissioner F. V. du Pont issues the first "Cherry Memorandum." It indicates that to ensure uniform interpretations nationwide, whenever a ruling or interpretation of general importance is made in Washington, DC, copies will be sent to all field offices on cherry-colored paper. "I trust," du Pont says, "that every effort will be made in the Divisions to see that they use Bureau policies, as distinguished from Division policies." Cherry Memorandum No. 2 (August 16) concerns Section 17 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1954, which requires that projects "shall be performed by contract awarded by competitive bidding . . . unless the Secretary of Commerce shall affirmatively find that, under the circumstances relating to a given project, some other method is in the public interest."
previous next

Return to FHWA By Day