March 16
| 1946 | At the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, IL, Deputy Commissioner of Public Roads H. E. Hilts addresses the Mississippi Valley Conference on "Activating the Postwar Federal-Aid Highway Program." He also looks back, "Now that the war is over we find it easy to forget the real concern that was felt . . . over a possibility of bombings and even invasions. [The PRA studied] the effectiveness of the strategic network of highways to accommodate 55-ton tanks in our coastal States . . . . At the same time as these studies were in progress, selections were being made of alternate routes paralleling each side of each route of the strategic network to facilitate potential heavy military movements. Fortunately we were not called upon to use these routes for these purposes except for maneuvers." |
