December 13
| 1913 | In Boston, MA, Director Logan Page addresses the Civil Service Reform League on "The Merit System in Road Management." His conclusion notes, "I hope this distinguished body will actively join in the good roads movement, not for the purpose of urging larger expenditures, not for the purpose of urging national aid, not for the purpose of developing better methods of construction and maintenance, but for the distinct purpose of seeing that this great public trust is administered for the benefit of the public and as an example of civic righteousness and good management.""We must consider the public road system of the United States as the only one of the great systems of transportation which is owned and controlled by the public, and in which every tax payer, rich or poor, is a share holder." |
| 1934 | At 2:30 this afternoon, President Franklin Roosevelt convenes a meeting with Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Admiral Christian Peoples, and Chief Thomas MacDonald to discuss a proposed transcontinental highway. According to Ickes' diary: "At intervals during the last year I have suggested the possibility of such a highway to the President. He has always been rather taken by the idea, but it has now really struck his imagination and he is giving very serious thought to it. Recently at one of our conferences to consider a program of public works for next year, the President outlined a route for a transcontinental highway from east to west and routes for two or three north and south highways. The meeting today was to consider these routes as outlined on a map of the United States and to consider costs, etc." |
| 1968 | Secretary Alan Boyd announces allocation of 1,472.5 miles of the 1,500 miles added to the Interstate System by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968. The mileage, he says, "will lend more flexibility to the entire system to permit it to meet the tremendous changes in population and development that have occurred since the original 41,000 mile network was charted." The longest sections added are in California (102.5 miles from San Diego to Colton) and Texas (125 miles from Amarillo to Lubbock). The shortest addition is in Iowa (the 0.5-mile Iowa portion of the Sioux City-South Sioux City spur). |
