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FHWA By Day

A Look at the History of the Federal Highway Administration
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September 24
1907 At a good roads convention in Springfield, MA, OPR Assistant Director A. S. Cushman says, "When I go out into the country I don't want to ride in an alley of signboards, and it is our business to protest against these sore spots along the thoroughfares."
"I have noticed that where the roads are good the children in that vicinity look tidy and clean, and where the roads are bad the children are unkempt and dirty. The condition of the families reflects on the roads and vice versa."
A. S. Cushman
Assistant Director, OPR
September 24, 1907

1967 Secretary of Transportation Alan Boyd announces a $4.8 million contract with the city of Baltimore, MD, to finance a team of engineers, architects, city planners, sociologists, economists, and others who will work jointly on routing and design of a section of Interstate highway--the first such combined approach, which he says "may well set a pattern for designing urban highways across the nation."
1968 Secretary of Transportation John Volpe, Administrator Lowell Bridwell, and invited guests view the premiere of FHWA's film, "Highways Are For People," in the New Senate Office Building. The film stresses the beneficial role of highways in the development of the United States.
1971 Secretary of Transportation John Volpe is among the guests as the Duluth-Superior Bridge (Minnesota-Wisconsin) is renamed "The John A. Blatnik Bridge" (I-535). Representative Blatnik, says Volpe, "played a key role in establishing and fostering the foundation for this magnificent program back during the Eisenhower Administration." (See September 4, 1959.) The 7,975-foot bridge and its 2,800-foot approaches had been dedicated on December 2, 1961, with Administrator Rex Whitton and Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges among those present.
"Through sponsorship of the Interstate highway program, [Representative John A. Blatnik] has bridged not only section or region or state, but the entire nation."
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey
Dedication Ceremony, The John A. Blatnik Bridge
September 24, 1971

"[The John A Blatnik Bridge] will long stand not so much as a memorial to me but as a reminder of what this bridge means to our area, both in substance and in symbol . . . . We shall build on our present achievements, with this bridge as the symbol of what is yet to come for each other, for our States, and our Nation."
US Representative John A. Blatnik
Dedication Ceremony
September 24, 1971
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