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FHWA By Day

A Look at the History of the Federal Highway Administration
Table of Contents - April 30 - May 1
Also in April
1944 AASHO's magazine, American Highways, publishes the "Foreword" for a new series, "Public Roads of the Past," by "The Old Roadbuilder" (Albert Rose, a BPR employee from 1919 to 1957). The first article, "How the Road Got Its Name," appears in the July 1944 issue. The series concludes in 1950 (and was published in book form under the series title in 1952) and a second series, "Historic American Highways," gets underway. The series continued until the October 1953 issue, but in the next quarterly issue (January 1954), the magazine noted that the voluminous second series would take 10 years to publish at the current rate. "With a feeling of sadness, therefore, we now bid adieu to this fascinating historic treatise. We express our sincere thanks to the 'Old Road Builder,' Mr. Rose, for his tireless and unremitting efforts to record in printed form a history of highway development." The second series was published in its entirely in 1953. (See October 17, 1979.)
Photo: Albert C. Rose
Albert C. Rose
"The Old Roadbuilder"
1958 Architectural Record contains Lewis Mumford's "The Highway and the City," an early indictment of the Interstate Highway Program, particularly in urban areas. The article begins, "When the American people, through their Congress, voted a little while ago . . . for a twenty-six-billion dollar highway program, the most charitable thing to assume about this action is that they hadn't the faintest notion of what they were doing."
"When the American people, through their Congress, voted a little while ago for a twenty-six-billion dollar highway program, the most charitable thing to assume about this action is that they hadn't the faintest notion of what they were doing."
Lewis Mumford
Historian and philosopher
Architectural Record

1970 Secretary of Transportation John Volpe agrees to shift the path of I-75 300 feet as it leaves Tampa, FL, to avoid disturbing an eagle's nest in the top of a 50-foot pine tree on the banks of the Manatee River, northeast of Bradenton. A pair of bald eagles moves into the nest each fall and departs as soon as their newly hatched eaglets are airborne. The shift, according to Administrator Frank Turner, points up the value of the public hearing process. "The eagle's nest was called to official attention during the initial public hearings on the extension of Interstate 75 from Tampa to Miami. The route was moved without a mummer of dissent, for everyone wants to do all he can to try to preserve this symbolic American bird which is on the verge of extinction."
1971 Bridge Division Chief W. Jack Wilkes opens FHWA's first 6-week Bridge Engineering Design Workshop. The workshop, directed by Stanley Gordon, provides a broad treatment of bridge engineering, followed by detailed consideration of relatively advanced bridge design.
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