Highway History

THE NATIONAL OLD TRAILS ROAD

PART 4: From Named Trails to U.S. Numbered Highways

President Harding on Trucks and Railroads

On December 8, 1922, President Harding delivered his second annual message before a joint session of Congress. For the first time in history, the President’s address was broadcast by radio to “be heard by many thousands outside of the House chamber and hundreds of miles distant from Washington,” as The Washington Post told readers. “The broadcasting will be done from the naval air station at Annapolis.”

When the President entered the chamber around 12:30 p.m., he was greeted with applause for several minutes. First Lady Florence Harding, “in her room at the White House, through a receiving set specially installed, listened to the address and the applause that greeted him upon entering the House and that frequently punctuated his message.” [“Will Read Message to Congress Today” (December 8, 1922) and “Applause Greets Request for Prompt Action” (December 9, 1922), The Washington Post]

He went through a number of concerns, foreign and domestic, but after describing the problems of the farming sector, turned to transportation:

I know of no problem exceeding in importance this one of transportation. In our complex and interdependent modern life transportation is essential to our very existence. Let us pass for the moment the menace in the possible paralysis of such service as we have and note the failure, for whatever reason, to expand our transportation to meet the Nation’s needs.

In the three decades ending in 1920, the country’s freight by rail had increased from 631 million tons to 2.234 million tons; “that is to say, while our population was increasing, less than 70 per cent, the freight movement increased over 250 per cent.” The country had 40 percent of the world’s railroad mileage, “and yet find it inadequate to our present requirements”:

When we contemplate the inadequacy of to-day it is easy to believe that the next few decades will witness the paralysis of our transportation-using social scheme or a complete reorganization on some new basis. Mindful of the tremendous costs of betterments, extensions, and expansions, and mindful of the staggering debts of the world to-day, the difficulty is magnified. Here is a problem demanding wide vision and the avoidance of mere makeshifts. No matter what the errors of the past, no matter how we acclaimed construction and then condemned operations in the past, we have the transportation and the honest investment in the transportation which sped us on to what we are, and we face conditions which reflect its inadequacy to-day, its greater inadequacy to-morrow, and we contemplate transportation costs which much of the traffic can not and will not continue to pay.

Manifestly, we have need to begin on plans to coordinate all transportation facilities. We should more effectively connect up our rail lines with our carriers by sea. [Applause.] We ought to reap some benefit from the hundreds of millions expended on inland waterways, proving our capacity to utilize as well as expend. We ought to turn the motor truck into a railway feeder and distributor instead of a destroying competitor.

It would be folly to ignore that we live in a motor age. The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of our present-day life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never halted to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its victim. With full recognition of motor-car transportation we must turn it to the most practical use. It can not supersede the railway lines, no matter how generously we afford it highways out of the Public Treasury. If freight traffic by motor were charged with its proper and proportionate share of highway construction, we should find much of it wasteful and more costly than like service by rail. Yet we have paralleled the railways, a most natural line of construction, and thereby taken away from the agency of expected service much of its profitable traffic, for which the taxpayers have been providing the highways, whose cost of maintenance is not yet realized.

The Federal Government has a right to inquire into the wisdom of this policy, because the National Treasury is contributing largely to this highway construction. Costly highways ought to be made to serve as feeders rather than competitors of the railroads, and the motor truck should become a coordinate factor in our great distributing system.

This transportation problem can not be waived aside. The demand for lowered costs on farm products and basic materials can not be ignored. Rates horizontally increased, to meet increased wage outlays during the war inflation, are not easily reduced. When some very moderate wage reductions were effected last summer there was a 5 per cent horizontal reduction in rates. I sought at the time, in a very informal way, to have the railway managers go before the Interstate Commerce Commission and agree to a heavier reduction on farm products and coal and other basic commodities, and leave unchanged the freight tariffs which a very large portion of the traffic was able to bear. Neither the managers nor the commission saw fit to adopt the suggestion, so we had the horizontal reduction too slight to be felt by the higher class cargoes and too little to benefit the heavy tonnage calling most loudly for relief.

He was mainly concerned about operation of the railroads. The companies were “not to be expected to render the most essential service in our social organization without a fair return on capital invested, but the Government has gone so far in the regulation of rates and rules of operation that it has the responsibility of pointing the way to the reduced freight costs so essential to our national welfare. [Applause.]”

He rejected the idea of government operation:

It was Government operation which brought us to the very order of things against which we now rebel, and we are still liquidating the costs of that supreme folly.

“Surely,” he said, “the genius of the railway builders has not become extinct among the railway managers.” When labor, which took 50 to 60 percent of railway earnings, went on strike, it “threatened the paralysis of all railway transportation.” What was needed was “the effective correlation and a concerted drive to meet an insistent and justified public demand.” [“Address of the President,” Congressional Record — House, December 8, 1922, pages 213-214]

President Harding’s supporters in Congress concluded that he had laid out enough tasks for 6 or 8 months of work, far beyond what a Congress that was to end on March 4, 1923, could achieve. One issue involved whether to ban railroad workers from going on strike. His requests may not have been as specific as some had hoped, but “his demand for cheaper and better transportation was expressed in no uncertain terms,” according to The Baltimore Sun. He had received applause for his call to relieve the plight of farmers by extending them further credits and ensuring the availability of cheaper transportation:

President Harding coupled transportation and farm problems in his message. After showing that additional credits should be extended to the farmer, and that this would possibly be enlarging the powers of the Farm Labor Board, he laid down the proposition that freight rates were now so high and transportation had been so inadequate in recent months that the farmer has suffered “losses counted in tens of millions.”

Although “permanent agricultural good fortune depends on better and cheaper transportation,” according to the President, he laid down no formula for cheapening transportation. [“Harding Plans Make Special Session Likely,” The Baltimore Sun, December 9, 1923, page 1]

Boonville Bridge Planned

Judge Lowe had been in Jefferson City, Missouri, on January 26, 1921, for a meeting with the executive committee of the Missouri Old Trails Association at the Madison Hotel. A major portion of the meeting concerned construction of a Missouri River bridge at Boonville. All agreed the bridge must be built. Judge Lowe declared:

The Old Trails Road is a national highway created by an act of Congress and the State Legislature cannot change it and there will be no disposition to change it; but there will be an effort to change the route by way of Jefferson City because of the fact that there is no bridge on the north side of the river. Such a bridge must be built.

While agreeing the bridge was needed, the executive committee was neutral on where it should be located. The members believed that State highway officials should make that decision.

A news account of the meeting continued:

When asked his opinion on the cost of the bridge, Judge Lowe said he believed $500,000 would be sufficient to cover it. While a free bridge would be preferable, it would probably be necessary to collect tolls until the federal government or state took it over, he believes.

The article quoted Boonville’s Arthur W. Wallace:

Boonville is eager to have the bridge cross the river at that point. He stated that should the project cost $500,000, at least $250,000 could be raised in Boonville by subscription. It was his opinion, however, that it would not be necessary to build a bridge of this nature. The M.K.&T railroad has contemplated building a new bridge to replace the present one and the town has offered the [rail]road a $100,000 bonus to make it suitable for automobile traffic. So far the road has not seen fit to take up this offer. Wallace believes that the road will build such a bridge if they were given approximately $250,000. He holds that if such a scheme should be accepted the cost of maintaining the bridge, which would be borne by the railroad, would save a large amount of money.

The executive committee’s chairman, E. N. Hopkins of Lexington offered his thoughts on the National Old Trails Road. These comments came before enactment of the Centennial Road Act:

There should be no contest with regard to the Old Trails Road. Whatever rights other routes may have, the matter of state pride should be recognized. Missouri was the first state to form an Old Trails Road society, June 24, 1911. It is strange that the eastern and western states have taken up the work and completed it. Missouri is the weak link in this great ocean-to-ocean national highway, because the road laws were designed to meet agricultural conditions of a few years ago. Now that we have the funds to carry on the work the idea of going back on the sentiment and first project and take up another one seems to strike at the integrity of the state. [“Committee to Consider Old Trails Bridge,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, January 26, 1921, page 1]

A year and a half later, on July 8, 1922, Cooper County ratified a $125,000 bond issue for construction of a free bridge across the Missouri River at Boonville on the National Old Trails Road, by a vote of 4,898 for and 1,708 against. Within Boonville township, only 11 votes were cast against the bonds.

The estimated cost of the bridge was approximately $500,000. The Old Trails Bridge Company, organized in Boonville, was in charge of construction, with the cost to be divided:

The bridge was to be 3,128 feet long, including 1,820 feet in the river section consisting of three riveted steel spans 420 feet each, and two 280-foot long steel spans. The longer spans were to be supported on pneumatic concrete piers sunk to bedrock. The two shorter spans would rest on concrete piers resting on piling. The roadway on the bridge would be 20 feet wide. The bridge clearance over the river at the high-water stage would be 55 feet, which engineers predicted would be sufficient for any steamboat to pass under the bridge.

Boonville voted a bond issue of $50,000 for the approach to the bridge from the city. The approach would be 564 feet long of reinforced concrete. The approach on the other end, in Howard County, would be of piling and earth connecting with a macadam highway.

The Mount Vernon Bridge Company of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, won the contract for the steel work on the bridge at a cost of about $398,000. The contract for the substructure was awarded to the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Company of Leavenworth, Kansas. The contracts called for completion of the bridge by December 31, 1922. [“New Bridge Over the Missouri,” Missouri Road Bulletin, March 1922, page 7; “Missouri River Bridge at Boonville, 1922/How the Bridge Will be Paid for,” Forty-Second and Forty-Third Annual Reports, Bureau of Labor Statistics, State of Missouri, 1921-1922, page 766]

The New Mexico-Arizona Connection

BPR Chief MacDonald had asked the States to submit tentative Federal-aid systems and instructed them on how to prepare the maps, along with a caution about length:

The present policy is to assent to no expansion of the existing State system, to encourage a reduction of the systems as revisions are made, and as individual projects are considered to assure that they lie on routes which are sufficiently important to warrant complete improvements as construction work is continued over a period of years.

To comply with BPR’s request, Arizona State Engineer Thomas Maddock wrote to each county to request a map showing the roads and a report on total mileage. In his biennial report, he explained, “It was difficult in many cases to get a definite report, owing to the fact that many of the desert and mountains trails were not included.”

After compiling the data, Maddock wrote to E. S. Wheeler, BPR’s District Engineer for the southwestern States, on December 30, 1921:

The mileage of roads in the various counties of the State is approximately 21,400 miles, which compels us to limit our 7 per cent system to approximately 1,500 miles. This is a reduction of approximately 300 miles from the roads suggested by your office, but this action is in accordance with instructions of Mr. MacDonald . . . .

The selections included the National Old Trails Road. There was a problem, as Richard K. and Sherry G. Mangum explained in their history of the National Old Trails Road in Arizona:

When the Engineer presented his first map to federal officials for approval of the state’s section of 7% Roads, however, he omitted the Holbrook-Gallup [via Lupton] branch of the Old Trails, showing only the Holbrook-Springerville highway.

Maddock had written that he had eliminated “the road from the junction of the Apache trail east of Mesa thru Holbrook to Lupton, as we have not sufficient mileage for this road nor have we the funds in sight for its construction.” He added, “The major portion of the road from the junction east of Mesa to Holbrook also lies within the forest reservation so it will no doubt be taken care of by forest funds”:

We will endeavor to construct a road from Holbrook to Lupton, but in view of the fact that there is hope of little Apache county bond money being placed on this road and very small possibility [due to opposition from St. Johns and Springerville] of securing an appropriation from the legislature sufficient to construct to Federal Aid standards, we believe that even if we had the mileage available we should not indirectly pledge the state to its early construction by incorporating it in the 7 per cent system.

Federal engineers disapproved the map and sent it back. BPR’s Wheeler replied on January 24, 1922, to suggest possible changes in the map. One suggestion was to eliminate the connections from Tombstone to Nogales and from Nogales to Tucson. While they would eventually be desirable, “they are not particularly pertinent to the skeleton system at the present time”:

The mileage resulting from such elimination would provide sufficient mileage to close the gap between Holbrook and Lupton, a very necessary connection in view of the fact that the State of New Mexico proposes a connection at Lupton primary in character. In fact it would appear that this connection would almost be required. Further, this eliminated mileage would furnish a possible route from Grand Canyon connecting with your east and west northern route.

Maddock continued to work with BPR officials and participated in a July meeting called by BPR for the 11 western States to finalize their systems. The meeting allowed for discussions to ensure connections of the primary system across State lines.

On July 31, 1922, Maddock confirmed Arizona’s agreement:

We are submitting five copies of map of Arizona showing the 7% system, in accordance with the verbal understanding arrived at between the various State Highway Departments, at the meeting held in San Francisco at the call of Mr. Thomas H. MacDonald, Director of the Bureau of Public Roads, on July 25-25, 1922.

Regarding changes from the December 1921 map, he included:

At the suggestion of the Bureau of Public Roads, we have placed on our secondary system the connection between Holbrook and Lupton with the understanding that in return for this action on the part of Arizona, New Mexico will place on her 7% system the road from Lordsburg to Franklin.

The road from Lordsburg, New Mexico, to Franklin, Arizona, carried several main named trails, including the Lee Highway, the Atlantic-Pacific Highway, and the Apache Trail.

On September 1, 1922, Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace approved Arizona’s 7-percent system. It totaled approximately 1,498 miles, “so that the system does not exceed the mileage allowed by law.” He listed the routes that were in the system, including:

Topock, Kingman, Ashfork, Flagstaff, Winslow, Holbrook, Lupton, New Mexico Line.

Holbrook, St. Johns, Springerville, New Mexico Line.

Thus, the final 7-percent system included the National Old Trails Road and both of its Arizona-New Mexico connections.

Secretary Wallace added that “it has been considered advisable to defer until later the determination of the classification which shall be given to each of the routes embraced in the system for each state.” The relative importance of each route — whether it was primary or interstate in character — could be determined after “future study” developed additional information that “might influence the final classification.” In short, the National Old Trails Road’s links across the New Mexico State line were included in the 7-percent as neither primary nor secondary routes.

Maddock, in his summary of designation of the State’s 7-percent system of Federal-aid roads, stated:

The seven per cent was divided into three per cent primary or interstate, and four per cent inter-county, but in the eleven western public land states practically the entire seven per cent will be absorbed in the construction of interstate roads.

To date no differentiation has been made by the federal law or by the rules and regulations of the Bureau of Public Roads between the primary and secondary highways, as to funds available from the government, the width of the road or the type of surfacing.

In length Arizona’s portion of the seven per cent system is less than one per cent of the total seven per cent mileage in the United States. A glance at the map indicated that these roads pass through nearly every large city and town in Arizona. Nearly two-thirds of Arizona’s Seven Per Cent system is already improved . . . .

At the present rate of progress, it is conservatively estimated by the Arizona Highway Department that Arizona’s Seven Per Cent system will be so improved within the next fifteen months that it will be possible to average thirty miles per hour in traversing any road across the State. [Fifth Biennial Report of the State Engineer to the Governor of Arizona, Fiscal Years Ending June 30, 1921 and 1922, pages 19-31]

The Mangums summarized:

The Arizona Engineer had no choice but to consent, since Arizona sorely needed federal aid and had to abide by the federal decision. Had the federal engineers not insisted on the inclusion of the Gallup branch, the Arizona Engineer would have torpedoed the work of the National Old Trails Road Association, stealthily thwarting it without notice and without review. The Gallup route thus had narrowly survived another attack by hostile forces. But it turned out that this was only a battle, not the end of the war.

The problem was that as was happening around the country, Arizona had been hit by the post-war economic downturn in 1921. The Mangums explained the result:

Bureaucrats in the state house hid the impact by shifting money back and forth from budget to budget, hoping that conditions would improve and fresh funds could be used to patch up their fiscal manipulations. The State of Arizona was essentially kiting checks to pay its bills. The music stopped when an audit revealed that the Arizona Highway Department was in debt to the tune of almost half a million dollars.

In 1921, Arizona did some work on the National Old Trails Road, including the “road West of Williams and down Ash Fork hill,” but the work was primitive “because the funds would only allow grading, not surfacing.” Further work would depend on resolving the financial mess.

At the same time, Flagstaff decided to stop complaining about the Grand Canyon bypass of their city (see discussion of the Walnut Canyon Bypass in part 3) “and took the bill by the horns, convincing Coconino County to improve the road from Maine to the Grand Canyon so that it could be considered the primary automobile road to the scenic wonder”:

County officials had a hidden agenda in connection with this project, for they had decided that once the Maine road was usable, they would no longer maintain the old route to the Grand Canyon from Flagstaff, which would solve the bypass problem . . . once the old road became impassable due to lack of maintenance. [Mangum, Rickard K, and Mangum, Sherry G., The National Old Trails Road in Arizona, Hexagon Press, Inc., 2008, pages 105-107]

Snailing Around

The January 1922 issue of AAA’s American Motorist contained an article by Elwood Lloyd titled “Snailing Around the U.S.A.” Snailing, he explained, involved traveling around the country in “a motor conveyance that carries its house upon its back and travels slowly.” His vehicle was a General Motors Corporation one-ton truck chassis on which a local truck body builder had erected a “five-room house having all the modern conveniences, but with no room less than 7 by 16 feet in dimension.” He had room for his two dogs.

Traveling around the country he covered the “wonderful roads from Cincinnati to Dayton, “and then nothing finer could be wished for motor travel than the National highway leading eastward to West Virginia”:

The roads were too good. Nothing to do but just sit at the wheel, like a bump on a log, and keep the accelerator depressed. Even the scenery proved uninviting where there was such ease of motion — developed instead of interest, a sort of day dreaming and species of self-hypnotism that did nothing other than to throw the miles behind. Our longest day’s run was made in this section, 127 miles, and of all the cruise thus far it bore the smallest fruit of real enjoyment. From reports heard we are sure that Ohio people are friendly but we have no first hand information on the subject; we traveled too fast to determine for ourselves.

West Virginia’s hilly travel, while not quite so swift as Ohio, is more conducive to friendly loitering and we like her people, notwithstanding certain sections are prone to argue matters of principle in manner forceful. Where we stopped long enough to swap a cheerful smile we found friends.

Southern Pennsylvania and Maryland are countries in which it is a delight to cruise leisurely. The Lincoln and National highways provide good runways for scooting from point to point for delectable side jaunts off the beaten path. [Lloyd, Elwood, “Snailing Around the U.S.A.,” American Motorist, January 1922, pages 29-30, 42]

President Harding on the Road

For President Harding, automobile travel was a favorite pastime, along with golf and cards. A contemporary account in The Baltimore Sun described him:

The President has succeeded in creating the impression that he is always at the service of the people. He is ever ready to make a speech to a group of children, a delegation of Shriners, a committee of scientists, at a memorial meeting and informal gatherings. No President has ever been more democratic in his personal relations to the people. He likes to mix with them, and very frequently dodges the Secret Service sleuths assigned to protect him from annoyance, to wander around as he pleases. He likes to go off on trips by railway, boat or motor. He could quality as an expert chauffeur, and some of his passengers say that he “steps on it” a trifle too hard to suit them, which means that he likes to “hit it up.” [“Harding Often At Work, But very Seldom At Play; A Close-Up of President,” The Baltimore Sun, July 24, 1921, page T2]

He was the first President who had driven automobiles as opposed to being driven in one. After being elected to the Senate in 1914, he had often driven his Locomobile on the National Old Trails Road to and from his home in Marion, Ohio, to Washington.

He also was the first President to ride in an automobile to his inauguration. The vehicle was a Packard Twin 6 supplied by the Republican National Committee. As The Washington Post put it, “President-elect Harding’s action in choosing a more modern method of transportation probably sounds the death knell of the carriage as the presidential conveyance on Inauguration Day.”

His Locomobile was brought to the White House, and he purchased a new Locomobile in 1921 that cost $9,000 (the equivalent of $125,000 today). During his term, however, the official White House automobile during his term was a Pierce-Arrow. The Secret Service would not let him drive any of the vehicles. [Collins, Herbert Ridgeway, Presidents on Wheels, Acropolis Books, 1971, page 143-145; “Harding Will Ride in Auto to Capitol,” The Washington Post, January 1, 1921, page 1]

On July 1, 1922, President Harding and his wife Florence left at noon in the White House Pierce Arrow for the 83-mile trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to watch 5,000 U.S. Marines reenact Pickett’s Charge, one of the pivotal moments in the Battle of Gettysburg 49 years earlier on July 3, 1863. The presidential party of 10 vehicles arrived in mid-afternoon after a drive of 3 and a half hours. Part of the trip was in a “driving rain,” as The New York Times reported. The President made several stops, including one near Frederick, Maryland, at “Richfields,” the birthplace of General Winfield Scott Schley, a hero of the Spanish American War in 1898:

A group of men, women and children had assembled there, including a dozen perspiring men, who said they had been threshing in a nearby field. As the President grasped the hand of each he remarked that any man who lived on a farm was to be envied.

Approaching the Pennsylvania State line, the presidential caravan stopped to allow Governor William C. Sproul and his party to welcome the President to the State. An automobile carrying some of the President’s officials “was crowded off the road to avoid colliding with an automobile ahead and crashed into a fence. The machine was not damaged, however, and none of the occupants was injured.”

Although the official reenactment would take place on July 3, the Marines staged a rehearsal for President Harding to observe before he left for his first presidential visit to his home in Ohio. He watched the rehearsal by climbing to the top of Ziegler’s Grove Observation Tower on Cemetery Ridge. [“Harding Watches Pickett’s Charge,” The New York Times, July 2, 1922, page 6]

They stayed overnight in a “temporary White House of canvas and wood,” as the Times described it, on a temporary camp the Marines had established for the reenactment. “The structure is equipped with elaborately fitted sleeping roms [sic], baths, electric lights and even has a front porch.” Bell Telephone Company ran a line to the camp in case a need arose for communication with Washington.

On Sunday, July 2, the Hardings and their party left Gettysburg to drive to Ohio. “Reveille bugles of the Marine Corps at Camp Harding, Gettysburg, roused the Presidential party at 6 o’clock this morning. Few were able to sleep the night through, for a severe thunderstorm with high wind and torrential rain hung over the Gettysburg battlefield for several hours.” Following Sunday services, the Harding party left Gettysburg at around 9:30 a.m. to follow the Confederate Army’s retreat from Gettysburg. Because of the severe storm, Army vehicles had to haul the automobiles out of the mud.

They briefly followed the Lincoln Highway through Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and continued on to the National Old Trails Road at Hagerstown and Cumberland, Maryland, where they stopped an hour for lunch. The rest of their trip would be on the National Old Trails Road. “All along the route they were greeted by thousands of person [sic] who had received word of their coming and massed to greet them as they motored through.” At Chambersburg, church services and Sunday school were delayed “to give men, women and children an opportunity to see the President.”

They then continued through a heavy shower to Uniontown. After a 175-mile ride over the Cumberland Mountains, they arrived at the Summit Hotel about 7 miles from Uniontown at around 7:30 p.m. The ride “was taken at a comfortable rate of speed, and a few stops were made on the hill tops to enjoy the views over the rolling valleys of dense shade trees, splotched with the gold of ripening wheat.” At one point, they “drove through a terrific storm over the mountains from Cumberland, and at one stage of the storm the party had to stop to seek shelter from the rain.”

As they traveled, “each village was on the lookout for the President. Motor parties along the road were also on the watch, and all received a cheery wave from the President and Mrs. Harding.” The President retired early at the Summit Hotel, according to The Washington Post. He hoped to reach Marion the following evening, “but those in charge of the itinerary hesitate to believe that the journey can end before Tuesday unless good weather and good roads expedite traveling”:

The automobiles accompanying the President’s car were not so fortunate in today’s run from Gettysburg to Uniontown as was that of the President. The latter made the journey without the semblance of a mishap, but heated axles, blowouts and a variety of misfortunes bobbed up during the journey to vex others, and the President’s secretary and his military aid several times were separated by miles from their chief and were compelled to stop along the mountain roads of Maryland to make repairs . . . .

Mr. and Mrs. Harding seem not in the least fatigued by their journey and assert they prefer the view of the fine scenery of the country through which they are passing to a train ride, by which it is only a little more than a night’s journey from Washington to Marion. [“President Resumes Journey to Marion,” The New York Times, July 3, 1972, page 6; “Cheer Harding Party,” The Washington Post, July 3, 1922, page 1]

At 8 a.m., on Monday, July 3, the Harding caravan left for Marion, still on the National Old Trails Road. They passed “without incident” through the bituminous district where minors were on strike. Between Washington, Pennsylvania, and Wheeling, West Virginia, they had to take “a ten-mile detour, the main road having been closed for repairs”:

This delay and the prolonged enthusiasm of a number of county and local reception committees that hailed the President’s car to pay their respects put the party about two hours behind its schedule.

There was a stop at Wheeling for luncheon, and then the party pushed on for Columbus. Townspeople and farms along the National Highway between Wheeling and Columbus apparently had been waiting hours for a glimpse of the President. Intent upon seeing Mr. Harding and not knowing in advance that General [John J.] Pershing [the leader of the American Expeditionary Force in the recent war] was also in the party, the faces of the watchers were a study when the General’s high-powered car flew by behind the President’s.

But they were not too surprised to find their voices. On the outskirts of Columbus several automobile loads of the Marion Centennial Committee . . . followed the members of the Presidential party to their hotel . . . . After a quick dinner at their hotel the President and his party left the city for Marion.

President and Mrs. Harding, along with their accompanying vehicles, were escorted to Marion by a delegation of his old friends. The arrived around 11:45 p.m.

Marion officials and residents had expected the President earlier in the evening and had arranged a big welcome. However, when they were told that the presidential party would dine in Columbus and arrive in Marion around midnight, the official welcome home was postponed. “The result was that when a quick dash through the dust from Columbus brought the President and Mrs. Harding here ahead of time there were few people on hand to greet them.” Because they had rented their home to a retired coal and lumber dealer, they were headed for the home of the President’s father, Dr. George T. Harding, at 498 East Centre Street. [“President is Home After Motor Trip” and “Stops At Columbus For Lunch And Rest,” The New York Times, July 4, 1922, page 4; “Hardings At Marion,” The Washington Post, July 4, 1922, page 1]

The Hardings returned to Washington on July 8 — the anniversary of their wedding in 1891 — again following the National Old Trails Road on their 2-day journey. From Columbus, they spent the night at the Summit Hotel before leaving for Washington at 8:30 the next morning. After lunch at the Hagerstown Country Club, the presidential party left for Washington, arriving at around 7:30 p.m. [“Hardings, Wed in ’91, Mark Anniversary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 9, 1922, page 2; “President May Get Home Late Today,” The Evening Star, July 9, 1922, page 2]

The New York Times was inspired by President Harding’s auto trip to publish an article about exploring Maryland’s National Road. The article by T. C. Carrington, secretary of the Frostburg Commercial Club in Maryland, began:

President Harding’s recent selection of the National Road for his motor trip from Gettysburg to Marion, in preference to other more direct routes, has renewed the interest of motorists in that famous continental Highway, the oldest of all through roads and the most replete with scenic beauty and historic associations.

Carrington described the road from Baltimore to western Maryland as an example of “perfect construction” and referred to “the excellent condition in which it is maintained.” It was “one of the best known and most traveled highways in the United States.” The entire run from Baltimore or Washington to Wheeling “can be made in twelve hours, but those unused to mountain driving, or who pause to admire the beautiful scenery, take from fifteen to sixteen hours”:

It is the popular route for tourists from the West and Northwest to and from Florida. The road winds for hundreds of miles over majestic mountains and gentle hills, and through happy valleys offering rare and glorious views.

Travel over the National Road has been made peculiarly attractive this Summer by the establishment of comfortable camping grounds at various points in Maryland. There are eight of these camps; going west from Baltimore they are in the following order: Elkridge Farm, one and a half miles west of Ellicott City; Cooksville, Frederick, Conococheague west of Hagerstown, Hancock, Bellgrove, Frostburg, and Negro Mountain. All are supplied with the usual conveniences for tourists, the most elaborate being at Frostburg.

In an era before roadside infrastructure had developed, communities created campgrounds to provide the service that later would be provided by the private sector.

Carrington explained that Maryland’s State roads “have a width of 24 feet with a metal surface of 15 feet, to which is usually added five-foot shoulders”:

The Road Commission is now building five-foot concrete shoulders on each side of the National Road between Frederick and Baltimore, later this work will be extended the entire length. Statistics show that last year the greater number of accidents occurred not on the steep mountain grades but on the comparatively level stretches from Frederick east. The addition of these five-foot shoulders is expected to reduce these accidents. Where the National Road winds over the mountains in Western Maryland the commission is spending about $75,000 in banking and widening curves.

This Summer the commission has also placed markers at all horizontal and vertical curves on the National Road. These markers are lines put on with specially prepared paint and so drawn around and over curves in the road that the place of the car is clearly indicated to the driver either on the right or left side of the highway. They are of great protection to drivers where vertical curves prevent observation of cars coming over steep grades. At the summit of all mountains are signs giving the name of the mountain and its elevation, also detailed instruction to chauffeurs regarding mountain driving. [Carrington, T. C., “Motoring in Maryland,” The New York Times, July 23, 1922, page 89]

Across the Continent

In June 1922, The Saturday Evening Post, the most widely circulated weekly magazine in the country, carried an article about a coast-to-coast trip across the country on the National Old Trails Road. The author, Nina Wilcox Putnam, and her husband traveled across the country in 1920, crossing Missouri in the fall. (She referred to her husband as “George,” but at the time was married to her second husband, Robert J. Sanderson of Boston. During the 1920s, she wrote a humorous syndicated column that appeared in 400 newspapers called “I and George” that readers of this article would have been familiar with.)

Ms. Putnam was a prolific author, novelist, and playwright, as well as a frequent contributor to the magazine. Her article, which referred to the road only as the Santa Fé Trail, began:

In another year or so they are going to need traffic cops on the Santa Fé Trail all the way from Broadway and Forty-second Street to San Bernardino, California. And it is for the benefit of those who want to join the crowd that this article is written. Having made the trip myself and suffered upon it from lack of certain knowledge, it occurred to me that perhaps a lot of folks who contemplated motoring across this trail might like a little practical dope on the trip. So here you are. Tear this out and stick it in your wallet. You can depend upon its being the real thing.

To begin with, it is possible to cross the continent by motor at any time of the year, but it is not probable. Take it all in all, the best bet for general good weather and good road conditions is from the first of June to the first of September. I wouldn’t, however, advise making the start from the East after September first, as on the Lincoln Highway snow would very likely be encountered on the Continental Divide and through the Rockies. As for the time it takes, George — that’s my husband — and I drove across in eighteen days, actual driving time, without any night driving at all, taking our way in leisurely fashion and seeing everything as we went.

Two things scared motorists from a transcontinental trip:

Crossing the desert, and the fear of not being able to get adequate supplies for the motor and for their living. Both of these fears are chimeras. There is a gasoline station every seventy-five miles all the way across the desert, and other supplies may be purchased anywhere along the route. There is no Sahara stuff about it, except that which is derived from the Eighteenth Amendment [which declared the production, transport and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal, ushering in Prohibition].

After a motorist decides to make the trip, a route must be selected. “There are no less than six main roads from coast to coast, and the first thing to do is to obtain a good map and look it over carefully.” She recommended the “Transcontinental Map of Main Traveled Roads” issued by AAA. “This is not only a clear and well-arranged map but has a great deal of valuable detailed information printed on the back.”

She chose the National Old Trails Road/Santa Fé Trail, but wrote, “Every trail is worth taking of course.” She broke the trail into a series of “comfortable jumps, that any average driver can make”:

Another factor in her “jumps” was “the fact that excellent hotel accommodations can be secured in all the places mentioned.”

She chose the route because of “its infinite variety”:

Beginning with the charming Southern city of Baltimore you will next in order come upon the quaint little town of Frederick, which looks exactly as though it had been plucked bodily out of a set for a Civil War motion picture. It’s all you want and expect a small Southern town to look like, and then some. Next you get a good glimpse of the Western Pennsylvania coal fields and mining towns of which you read in the newspapers whenever there is a big rumpus going on in the coal industry.

Wheeling was “a charming city, alive, yet with a touch of quaintness, too” as was true all the way to Columbus. “This is agricultural country, and so much of a muchness as there is of it, then on to Indianapolis:

During the rainy season — or any other season for that matter — it is quite possible that you will find mud in this district, but there is always a way to get through.

The motorist will encounter cornfields in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois — “not measured by the acre but by the mile, and the growth not by the foot but by the yard”:

One passes literally through forests of corn and, I might say, shoals of pigs.

There is a richness about the entire stretch of territory that is enheartening to the Easterner, to whom bugaboos of Bolshevism and labor conditions are constantly presented.

Between Indianapolis and St. Louis, the motorist travels “over the Mississippi bottoms, a fertile flat land which in September is a blaze of golden bloom.” St. Louis “is a true city in the sense in which we know the word in the East,” but the rest of Missouri “is interesting chiefly because here begins a succession of beautiful little cities which are, so far as I know, unique and which continue from St. Louis through and beyond Kansas City to La Junta.”

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, “the whole journey has so far been leading up to the great change from the East to the West, but here it is as though the curtain had suddenly been lifted up on the play itself.” Leaving Kansas City, which she notes calls itself the “The Gateway to the West,” the motorist expects “enormous stretches of flat country filled with wheat and nothing but wheat.” Instead, Kansas was “one of the most varied states in the Union, and one of the most scenically dramatic.”

Approaching Colorado, the motorist is about to encounter mountain grades:

Trinidad comes next, and from this place one makes the Raton Pass over the Rockies, a drive that leads one to enormous heights over extraordinarily well-planned grades, a beautiful safe road, offering views that are like something you have dreamed about.

Alas, alack that I should have to say it of so marvelous a country as New Mexico, but it is the truth that the roads leave very much to be desired. There is a great deal of volcanic ash over this country, a substance which in its rough states is hard on tires, to say the least, and though it is an interesting experiment to cross an extinct volvanic cone heaped with black bowlders, it is not good motoring. But it is worth any trouble to reach the city of Santa Fé.

There is situated one of the most interesting and important institutions in the country — to wit: The Institute of American Archeological Research, housed in buildings that are perfect reproductions of old Spanish and Indian structures. The original Spanish governor’s palace is preserved in character.

The city of Santa Fé “is itself remarkably beautiful and picturesque, replete with old churches and walled gardens. One is reluctant to leave it.” She commented on interesting sights in the area, including how an “excellent road leads right to the edge of a thousand-foot cliff at the bottom of which a prehistoric community house lies, and to see this at sunset is to find suddenly at your feet the civilization of a bygone age, revealed as if by magic, in all its strange beauty”:

I note with interest that none of the big road maps mention the La Bajada grade. But believe me, anyone who has once been over it is likely to mention it — considerably! It consists of a series of sharp turns, and if you like the shoot-the-chutes at Coney Island you will be strong for it. In Santa Fé they told me it had originally been a mule trail used by the Indians and Spanish as far back as 1600, and all I can say is that it sure was some mule that first made the grade.

The drive from Santa Fé to Albuquerque, a large and prosperous town, is a dramatic one, good for dry weather, but in the event of a cloudburst in the mountains it is sometimes impassable. I have known of cars being stalled between washes for twenty-four hours at a stretch, unable to go either back or forwards.

In Albuquerque, she confronted the problem all motorists on the National Old Trails Road had to address, namely “which route to take to Holbrook, and to do so is an extremely difficult thing”:

If your time is somewhat limited and the upper road is in good condition I would suggest taking that one, as it makes the Laguna Indian Reservation very easily accessible, and there are no Indian villages on the southern trail. Los Lunas is the turning point where one must make one’s final decision. As a matter of fact both ways are interesting, although, all things considered, the northern route is perhaps more picturesque. On the southern route the Datil Forest offers a relief from the desert country and is extremely beautiful in a friendly and more intimate manner, and one rides for hours through great cathedral-like columns of fox-tail pines, an uncommonly straight tree with red bark and dark green needles. The route is unquestionably cooler than the other.

After discussing the Hope Reservation between Winslow and Gallup, Putnam discussed the Grand Canyon trip:

The road from Winslow to Flagstaff is through a mountainous pine-clad country, and both roads up to the Grand Caňon are passable but not good, having sand in many places, but no very bad grades. But from Williams to Needles, California, is perhaps the most difficult part of the trip, for the roads are undeniably poor and it is desert country.

Kingman, “one of the biggest mining interests for hundreds of miles around,” was the “only large town en route.” Motorists had two options between Kingman and Needles, California:

One is across a rather bad stretch of alkali desert, thought Yucca and Topock. And the other is by way of Goldroad, directly through the mountains over very bad roads and dangerous grades, but passing through several real mining settlements that bear all the earmarks of a gold boom town in a moving picture. Exceptionally careful driving is certainly necessary hereabouts, for the roads are full of blind turns and there is a long and unusually muddy stretch of bottomland approaching the Colorado River, which must be ferried on this route. The other route, which crosses the alkali stretch, is much longer, but the approach to Needles is over a bridge.

At Needles, “the real desert, the part of the trip which most people fear, is still before one.” Here, she credited the Automobile Club of Southern California, but she misunderstood its role compared with the California highway department:

But here begins the work of that astonishing organization, the Automobile Club of Southern California, which has attempted to lay a hard road over the face of the desert. In point of fact it has actually done so, though succeeding at times indifferently well, and after wading through heavy sand for a few miles immediately out of Needles one comes upon this paved boulevard in the middle of nowhere. It is an unexpected sight that raises one’s hopes unduly, for the character of the ground is such as to make a permanent road little short of impossible. Nevertheless, their attempt has resulted in good stretches, although the frequent sandstorms have completely buried it in places. Very likely even as I write[,] this condition has undergone a tremendous improvement, but it is true that the terrors of crossing the desert have been greatly alleviated by the work of the club and you can now drive and still look at something besides the wheel and the road immediately ahead of you.

Moreover, the desert was not like the Sahara. It was filled with growth and color, “except that one piece of alkali country between Kingman and Needles”:

If you can see nothing else upon the desert be sure you train yourself to perceive it shifting color and the weird tricks the light plays. More than this I cannot say. If you can’t see what is there I can’t tell you about it; it is one of those things that everyone must find for himself.

Between Daggett and Barstow, “the road is difficult; sandy, rough and high crowned.” The road between Barstow and the San Bernardino Pass “is also poor, the roadbed being of loose gravel, and the grades stiff”:

But at the end of this pass the miracle of California roads begins. At the very summit, sharply divided from the crude trail as though a knife had cut the black tar ribbon off abruptly, the paving starts, and from there on into San Bernardino, and thereafter, the beauty of the roads and the charm of the scenery both exceed the Eastern motorist’s wildest dream of perfection.

She went on to discuss what to wear; tools and equipment to carry in the car; the choice of car; life in the wilderness; sleeping and eating; and the wonders of the west. For women, her advice on clothing began:

East of the Mississippi George and I found it practicable to wear just such motor clothes as we would use around home. But we both made one serious mistake — to wit: We started out in dark clothing. Believe me, before we’d gone very far we found that what you want is dirt-colored clothes. West of the Mississippi khaki for all hands becomes positively de riqueur. After we left Kansas City I put on a pair of riding trousers, and oh, the joy of that! I need not sing their praises to any female who has tried them, but for the encouragement of those who have not, allow me to insist and reiterate that they are the only thing to wear in thorough comfort west of the Rockies. Everyone from grandmamma to the snappiest chicken in the snappiest roadster that you pass wears ‘em. Do not dream of going without them. Every department store that boasts of a motoring goods department now carries coat and knickers of khaki for women as well as for men, and these suits are remarkably reasonable, being purchasable for as little as six dollars; and believe me they will give six hundred dollars’ worth of comfort and ease. I assure you, ladies, that you can walk into the best hotels through the Far West in the aforesaid garments without the slightest embarrassment, and the clerk will not even smile after your back is turned.

She concluded her article with a discussion of the wonders of the West:

But replete with interest as the whole Santa Fé Trail is, and inescapable as are the beauties thereof, I am still going to lay stress upon the advantages of certain side trips that are easily made from the main road, and without which no transcontinental tour is complete.

All through the Middle West you will recognize the trade names of familiar articles blazing across in front of their home site, and you will find a welcome from practically all these concerns if you care to visit them. I would suggest that whenever possible you do so, inasmuch as actually seeing the tremendous scale upon which America manufactures goods and the wide variety of articles we produce aids materially in forming a proper concept of the country as a whole.

St. Louis does not appear to be a packing center, which it is, “for its residence district is uncommonly handsome, and it possesses an exceptional art museum”:

Kansas City is an object lesson in home building, and the average Easterner will be astounded at the uniform beauty of its residence developments and the interesting manner in which areas are restricted to a given type of architecture. The plan upon which its boulevards are laid out also is unique, and the planting of the parkways that border them will bring joy to the garden lover and the tree worshiper.

She found nothing particularly interesting to recommend between Kansas City and La Junta:

La Junta is the real starting point beyond which a variety of interesting side trips may be taken, beginning with the comparatively short run up to Colorado Springs via Pueblo, where the road in normal times is excellent, and from which a jog may be made back to the main route via Aguilar to Trinidad.

She recommended that readers planning a trip through the area write to the U.S. Department of the Interior to request “an excellent decorative pamphlet covering all the national parks,” including information about motor vehicle regulations, saddle-horse rentals, and other details. “All these folders contain splendid maps, which are kept up to the minute as to road conditions.”

She had already spoken of the wonders of Santa Fé, but south of Albuquerque, she advised, “allow yourself an hour of two at Isleta, an Indian village, which is one of the cleanest and most self-respecting of the Indian centers but which has not foregone picturesqueness in favor of blue jeans, as so many of the professional railway-station Indians have.”

On the southern route between St. Johns and Holbrook, allow time to stop at the Petrified Forest. On the northern route from Belen, “it is a short trip to the Enchanted Mesa, while Laguna, perhaps the most noted of the pueblos, is almost directly on the railroad but is exceedingly picturesque in spite of the fact that it is the most highly commercialized of the Indian villages.

From Thoreau, New Mexico, is “a splendid trip to the more remote Pueblo Bonita, but Gallup was a starting point for several beautiful side trips, “notably the Zuni Indian Reservation and the far-famed Cañon de Chelly, which is perhaps the most dramatic trip of all.

At Winslow, “you can go down to the Roosevelt Dam over a somewhat difficult but exceedingly beautiful road, or north to the four little sky cities which represent the last stronghold of the Hopi Indians.”

Whatever else the motorist sees or passes up, “you cannot, must not, pass up the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.”

The gold country began at Kingman, “and the great basins used for washing gold by modern methods are only one of the many interesting things you will want to stop off and see.”

Nothing to see of importance was located between Kingman and Barstow, “and the only thing calculated to delay the traveler, who has by now become thirsty for a glimpse of California, are the marvelous experiments in dry farming for which this district is famous.”

Putnam concluded her article:

Upon leaving Barstow I strongly advise making straight to Riverside, California. But there is no news in that; I have from the start been advising you to go to California. [Putnam, Nina Wilcox, “A Jitney Guide to the Santa Fé Trail,” The Saturday Evening Post, June 10, 1922, pages 26-30, 76-77]

The Columbia Evening Missourian featured an article about Putnam’s article on its front page on June 9, 1922:

The authoress passed through Columbia in the fall of 1920 on a transcontinental tour and at that time liked the city so well that she remained here for two nights and a day. Women students in the School of Journalism gave an entertainment for her on this visit. At that time she expressed enthusiasm over Columbia and surrounding territory. [“National Old Trails Road Among Best,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, June 9, 1922, page 1]

The Worst Stretch in Missouri

Readers of The Columbia Evening Missourian on June 13, 1922, must have been relieved, if not surprised, by the beginning of a first page article:

Tourists traveling to and from many parts of the United States stop at the Columbia Tourist Camp.

Among those at the camp last night were Mr. and Mrs. P. M. Gortner, of Wabash, Ind., who are motoring to Pomona, Cal.

“The worst roads in the United States are not in Missouri,” Mr. Gortner said emphatically. “Everybody told me to beware Missouri roads but they should have said Kentucky, for that’s where the worst ones are.” [“Many Motors Stop at Camp For Tourists,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, June 13, 1922, page 1]

In early September, however, the Commercial Club of Columbia, Missouri, received a “bomb-shell” in the form of a letter from the Automobile Club of Missouri. One of the club’s drivers, who had crossed the State on the National Old Trails Road, concluded that the road between Columbia and Rocheport was in "very, very bad condition; consequently, it makes it impossible for us to send tourists over this route."

Directors of the Commercial Club agreed that this stretch of the road was in deplorable condition, as a news report explained:

It was brought out at the meeting that tourists coming through Columbia say the worst piece of road encountered on a trip across the country is between Columbia and Rocheport. The directors of the Commercial Club were deeply concerned over the condition of the road and expressed a desire and willingness to do everything possible to remedy the trouble.

They appointed a committee, headed by E. W. Stephens of the Missouri Old Trails Association, to determine what could be done in the short run to improve the road and to identify a permanent solution. “The committee was instructed to confer with county road supervisors, school districts, the State Highway Department, and others interested in good roads to ascertain what can be done to get the road in better condition at least until the permanent highways are completed.” [“Road Must Be Improved Soon,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, September 4, 1922, page 1]

The same issue of the newspaper carried an article above the Columbia-Rocheport bombshell about plans to apply 254 miles` of concrete from the Kansas City-St. Louis road.

The Kansas City-St. Louis primary road, which passes through Columbia, will be built the entire distance of 254 miles of concrete eighteen feet wide, B. H. Piepmeier, chief engineer, announced Saturday. Possibly in the sections adjoining the larger cities the width may be increased to twenty feet, he said.

The concrete will be built with a line of tar in a wide crevice in the center to divide the traffic. The line may serve also as an expansion joint.

The first block of $5,000,000 in bonds, according to the $60,000,000 road program, was sold to a syndicate headed by Liberty Central Trust Company of St. Louis for the high bid of $5,032,215. Seven syndicates submitted bids for the entire amount and the three individual bids were made for parts of the 5 million dollar issue.

The bonds are to be printed as soon as possible and delivered to the successful bidders. The $5,032,213, including premium and accrued interest, must be in the State Treasury by September 20.

The first contract for road construction work will be let as soon as the money is obtained. Final arrangements will be made September 19, and according to the program construction work will begin early in October. The contracts for the primary system, upon which Columbia is situated, will be let in sections of not more than five miles. The first contracts to be let will be near Kansas City-St. Joseph and St. Louis. Fifteen sections of the secondary system will be let at the same time and work begun immediately.

The fund commission of the highway department may sell another 5 million dollar bond issue this year. [“254 Miles of Concrete For New Highway,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, September 4, 1922, page 1]

On September 7, Stephens approached Piepmeier, who indicated that funds were not available for the Columbia-Rocheport road, but that after surveying for the cross-State highway was completed, funds might be available for part of the stretch. At present, the State almost was ready to advertise a contract for 25 miles of road in St. Louis County.

Those living along the gravel road admit it needs immediate attention:

According to one of the men on the ferry boat at Rocheport, tourists are also complaining about the entire road across Boone County on the Old Trails road. It is said they think the Fulton Gravel road in the Harg Special Road District from Big Cedar Creek on the Callaway County line to the beginning of the Columbia Special Road District road is almost as rough as the Rocheport end of it, and the four miles west of Columbia in the Columbia Special Road District is nothing to brag about. [“No Funds are Available for Road Repairs,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, September 8, 1922, page 1]

Stephens called a meeting for October 11 in Rocheport to discuss improving the road. A news report about the meeting began:

Nearly fifty farmers, living between Columbia and Rocheport met at the Midway School house last night and effected an organization to carry out the plans made for the repair of the Rocheport road. Committees for the solicitation of money from those living along the road were appointed and the plans for the repair of the road, the nature and extent of the work, were gone over.

Already, $1,500 had been pledged for the work, with $942 in cash. The new organization was going to try to raise more funds, in part by seeking contributions from the farmers living along the road. Some of the farmers would be able to contribute by working on the road.

Kirby Raines, a roadbuilder from Fayette, explained the problem to those at the meeting:

It is a waste of money to haul gravel to fill the holes in the road, unless it is properly ditched and crowned. If you just pile a lot of gravel on the bad parts of the road, it will all be washed away before next summer. The road must be well ditched to carry off the water that now stands in the center of the road. The outer edges of these parts of the road must be torn up and graded in the center. This will require the use of an elevating grader. In most places clay is needed to bind the gravel and sand together.

He estimated the work would cost an average of $300 a mile for the 10 miles of the Columbia-Rocheport road.

The group discussed asking students from the School of Engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia to participate in the road repairs, but a decision was not made. The concern was that not enough tools were available for so many students and farmers; they would have to work in shifts. [“50 Farmers Organize for Road Repair,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, October 11, 1922, page 1]

On October 19, 12 farmers came to Columbia to ask the County Court for aid on the road, but the members were not available. They met instead with a county clerk to get an estimate of the possible funds available for the work, but were informed them that all the County Court’s funds had been spent and that the current members would leave office in January. The court would not have any additional funds until the next term.

Aside from securing funds, the farmers were looking for an experienced road contractor who would be able to take complete charge of the construction work and see it to completion. [“Farmers Seek Aid of Court to Mend Road,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, October 19, 1922, page 1]

On October 19, the committee headed by Dr. Porter Mitchell, appointed Frank M. Quisenberry of the Midway district to direct construction of the improved gravel road. The plan was to work on several portions of the road at the same time so the farmers involved could work close to home. Initial work will be financed by the funds raised by the farmers before drawing on the $1,800 contributed by citizens of Columbia. A member of the committee, John T. McMullen, explained that the funds would be kept as far as possible for maintenance work on the road over the coming year. The committee considered it a waste of money to improve the road without providing for its upkeep. [“Repairs Start by Next Week,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, October 20, 1922, page 1]

The plan agreed on for the project was to dig ditches for drainage. Gravel will then be applied to fill in the holes before the surface is leveled. The committee had located rollers to pack the gravel in place and smooth the surface of the road. The project also included repairing culverts and bridges. McMullen commented, “It is very gratifying the way all persons solicited have responded and I think we will have no trouble now in putting the road in shape for travel.” [“First Work on Road to Begin,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, October 24, 1922, page 1]

In early December, the newspaper reported:

Repair of the Rocheport gravel road will be completed within the next two weeks if the weather continues favorably, according to Dr. Porter Mitchell, one of the executive committee in charge of the work.

Work on the road has been in progress for the last week under the direction of Frank Quisenberry, superintendent. The road from the Columbia Special Road District to within three miles of Rocheport had been plowed on the outer edges, and the gravel that loosened was being graded to the center of the road . . . .

Sixty-Five loads of gravel have been placed on the road. Doctor Mitchell said that the recent rains and the travel over this part of the road have packed the new roadbed until it is as hard and smooth as a city street.

Gravel is being obtained from Sugar Creek and is costing the farmers nothing. Milton Lowery, who lives near the Rocheport road, is also donating gravel. Dr. Mitchell said that so far the repair of the road has cost only a small sum.

A large force of men is to be put on the road next week hauling gravel and spreading it over the road. More than a dozen men and many teams and two graders have been busy this week. The plowing of the old roadbed is being done by a tractor which is capable of plowing a mile of road a day.

Doctor Mitchell said this morning that when actual work on the road was begun, enthusiasm was high and most of the pledges of money and help were doubled and even trebled. [“Road Nearing Completion,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, November 3, 1922, page 1]

By December 5, work was nearing completion. Men were directing teams dragging the road and filling in the “chuck” holes. McMullen reported that the work was progressing satisfactorily, with the road already surprisingly smooth considering how bad it was at the start. As of mid November, more than $500 had been spent on the work. McMullen estimated that the balance of funds when the project was completed would be enough to maintain the road for more than 6 months. [“Road Work Finished Soon,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, December 5, 1922, page 1]

According to Good Roads, engineering students wanted to help repair the road:

Three hundred University of Missouri engineering students recently volunteered their services for repairing the Columbia-Rocheport section of the Old Trails roads [sic], between St. Louis and Kansas City.

The road, which was hard-surfaced a number of years ago, is described by tourists as the worst in the United States.

The Missouri Automobile Club, according to reports received here, has been sending tourists across the state by other routes because of this bad stretch of road. [“University of Missouri Students Build Roads,” Good Roads, December 6, 1922, page 197]

D.A.R. Congress — 1923

During the 32nd D.A.R. Continental Congress, Mrs. Talbott reported on the work of the National Old Trails Road Committee. She began by emphasizing “the educational and historic value” of the committee’s work:

We believe that in the concentrated effort to search out the pioneers it has not only given to us, individually, a keener appreciation of the glory which crowned their sacrifice, but we have gained a broader knowledge of what “America” means. We are prone to accept conditions as we find them; but this movement has set in motion influences which will continue to operate long after our work is done.

The “determination of the greatest patriotic society, in the world, to erect a Monument extending from Ocean to Ocean, has drawn out the best your chairman could produce in a year of tremendous activity”:

Since the last Congress your National Chairman has written 717 personal letters; has distributed more than 1,000 maps of our road, and has issued 2,294 bulletins; also Congressmen have been interviewed regarding our bill, and House Resolution.

During this year there had been introduced in the House of Representatives a Joint Resolution by which the name “National Old Trails Road” is to be permanently and officially settled, as applying to this highway, and commending the patriotic services of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the National Old Trails Road Association, in promoting and signing the same. This Resolution did not pass the last session, but it will pass at the next session.

These two organizations have identical objects; that is, to ascertain and publish its location, its history, its relation to the development of the great west and the westward progress of civilization in pioneer days; the reconstruction of this highway into a wonderful military and civil transportation line; the permanent fixation by Acts of Congress of the name “National Old Trails Road,”: and the permanent sign-posting thereof, so that those who run may read, and become interested in the work of those who contributed so largely to the development of this country.

To show the value of cooperation, “and in the hope of completing our fund this year as the crowning achievement of our President General’s splendid term, the National Chairman offered a prize of $25.00 to the State which contributed the largest amount, in proportion to membership, for our road signs.”

Although Mrs. Talbott would be stepping down as chairman, she concluded her final report with enthusiasm:

In closing our final report I cannot adequately express my appreciation of the splendid co-operation which has always been accorded to me. To my State Chairmen I render whole-hearted praise; many of you I have not seen but across the distance we have clasped hands, and you who have so nobly rallied to the National call have made this a labor of love. To our National Officers, who have journeyed hither and yon, along our road, I express my appreciation of their every effort to advance this work . . . .

One more year of enthusiastic work will see our road signed from coast to coast. All of the details for the completion of our Memorial to the Pioneers have been worked out, and the end is in sight!

Pioneers, O Pioneers;
‘Tis your toil shall break the road;
‘Tis your backs shall bear the load;
‘Tis your souls must feel the goad;
Where ye sow shall others reap;
Others laugh where ye must weep;
But your deathless souls shall keep;
Vigil through the waiting years,
Pioneers, O Pioneers.

[Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Continental Congress of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, April 1923, pages 130-134]

Four Great Highways

The Literary Digest informed its readers in May 1923 of their options for transcontinental travel by automobile:

“The majority of motorists dream of the time when it will be possible for them to cross the American continent in one continuous journey,” says Arthur Cobb, Jr., in Motor Life (Chicago), but many are deterred from undertaking this jaunt because “they visualize themselves hanging over the brink of a cañon on a winding mountain road or plowing hub-deep through sand for weary miles across the dry and dismal deserts.”

The writer, who is manager of the Blue Book Touring Club, hastens to assure us that “the excellent work done during the past few years in improving coast-to-coast highways” makes a trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific no more formidable than one from Chicago to Milwaukee, for instance, “always provided you have sufficient leisure at your disposal.” Obviously the duration of a transcontinental journey depends a good deal upon the motorist’s inclinations and, to some extent, upon the car he drives, but with a total distance of 3,300 miles to cover, it is safe to figure on three weeks for the trip, taking 150 to 200 miles a day as a good driving average.

More important than the time is the route. It may be a surprise to some tourists to learn that the Lincoln Highway is not the only connecting-link between the shores of the two oceans. Three other “trails” across this broad land are systematically blazed with road-markers throughout their length, and no one possesses any definite superiority over the others.

The three trails were the Yellowstone Trail (Boston to Seattle), the Old Spanish Trail (Jacksonville, Florida, to San Diego), and the National Old Trails Road:

Unfortunately a great deal of confusion and in some cases deliberate misrepresentation exists. In many cases even nationally known highways coincide for a distance, tending to confuse the tourist who attempts to follow the markers; and in other cases, owing to sectional disputes or road construction, the exact routing is uncertain, the officials of the highways themselves not being able to give a straight answer to questions about the routing. The highway officials are in many cases not answerable, as these conditions sometimes arrive from causes beyond their control.

Whichever route the motorist chooses, “a trip across the American continent is an education and a lesson in geography that will last throughout the remainder of your life.” The automobile is the only means of conveyance “suited to so all-inclusive a purpose.”

As for the highways, Cobb wrote:

The National Road and the Old Spanish Trail are usually open the year round; the others are not. Of these two the National Road is by far the better. The Lincoln may be traveled at any time from June 1 to the middle of October, but its reputation is suffering severely from conditions in Nevada and western Utah. The Yellowstone Trail should not be attempted west of Minneapolis before June 15, nor after snow begins to fall in autumn.

As Cobb explained, the Lincoln Highway was the “most widely known of the transcontinental routes,” but he warned that “through western Utah and Nevada there is a great deal of rough, unimproved road, and while passable, it is somewhat unpleasant.” (The problem will be discussed later.)

As for the National Old Trails Road, Cobb described it:

The National Road is hard-surfaced from Washington to beyond the Mississippi River, then stretches of dirt and gravel alternate. Through the Mohave Desert, it is “sandy, but nearly always passable.” One advantage, says Mr. Cobb, is that —

This route goes through the Petrified Forest, and furnishes a side-trip to the Grand Cañon. If you take the National Road and wish to visit Denver and Yellowstone Park and points north, you can leave it at Indianapolis and follow the Pike’s Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway through St. Joseph, Missouri, to Colorado Springs or Denver, then north over the Yellowstone Highway to Yellowstone Park.

Cobb also summarized the Old Spanish Trail:

The Old Spanish Trail . . . is mostly sand-clay as far as New Orleans, with a few short stretches of dirt and several long ferries. If you take this route, watch your ferry schedules closely as the boats across Mobile Bay and into New Orleans run but twice a day, and plans should be made accordingly. From New Orleans to San Antonio the road is largely gravel with some stretches of hard surface; from San Antonio to El Paso mostly dirt and gravel with forty-five miles of concrete on each side of El Paso; from there on, alternative stretches of sand and gravel as far as Phoenix.

You have two choices from Lordsburg to Phoenix, one via Douglas and the other through Globe. The Douglas road is in very good condition and always passable and includes about twenty-five miles of concrete from Douglas to Bisbee. The shorter route through Globe is good in dry weather and will save considerable mileage, but should not be used in wet weather. From Phoenix a concrete road extends thirty-six miles west through an irrigation district to Buckeye and enters the desert at Hassayampa . . .; from here a fair desert road extends to Mecca, from which point pavement is almost complete to Los Angeles.

The Yellowstone Trail “is hard-surfaced to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and gravel from there to Ortonville, Minnesota; dirt — with a few short stretches of gravel from Ortonville to Billings; alternating dirt, gravel and hard surface from Billings to Seattle, with much pavement within the State of Washington.” [“Four Great Highways From Sea to Sea,” The Literary Digest, May 26, 1923, pages 61-65]

Another New President

After campaigning in 1920 for a "return to normalcy," President Harding would preside over one of the most corrupt Administrations in American history. The first major problem, known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, had emerged in 1922. Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, and other locations, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. Investigation of the emerging scandal led to other scandals that undermined the Harding Administration’s reputation, although the full extent of the corruption was not known in 1922 and 1923. In a 2021 survey of presidential historians of all 45 Presidents, President Harding ranked 37th, between President Herbert Hoover and Millard Fillmore. [C-SPAN Survey on Presidents 2021, C-SPAN.org]

With the economy gaining strength in 1923, President Harding’s confidence about his political future was increasing, as biographer Francis Russell explained:

By the end of spring Harding’s intimates were aware that he intended to run for a second term . . . . Facing four more years in the White House, Harding at last gave up the familiar thought of returning to his old editorial desk.

He was planning a trip to Alaska, the first President to visit the territory. He called the trip a Voyage of Understanding, as Russell explained:

But what had originally been planned as an excursion, he now saw in his earnestness as a “Voyage of Understanding,” reaching out and bringing his policies and his great issue of the World Court over the heads of the self-seeking politicians to the people’s judgment. He would speak at every city and whistle stop along the way, just as — although the irony escaped him — [former President Woodrow] Wilson had done four years before in defense of his League [of Nations]. Writing to Walter Brown [an aide during the 1920 campaign], Harding asked his help in planning the journey from Washington to Seattle to Alaska and back by way of San Francisco and Los Angeles, asking him to visit each scheduled city and to check up on all the local arrangements . . . .

To assert and justify his leadership in a series of speeches, to see and draw attention to his country’s neglected Northern territory where no President had yet set foot, to encounter ordinary shirt-sleeved Americans — that was how Harding saw his Voyage of Understanding. In preparing for his Alaskan journey it was as if he wanted to break the threads spun round him in Washington and “bloviate” with his obscure fellow countrymen beyond the city. He sensed his own inner change and confided to his friends that he felt a “conscious spiritual influence” in his actions. Walter Brown’s elaborate schedule for the tour now seemed an imposition. He complained to Colonel [Edmund] Starling [head of the White House Secret Service detail] that Brown was making a circus of the trip and ordered the Colonel to cut every program to the bone. Even so, the President was unavoidably faced with eighteen set speeches, plus innumerable informal talks at rural depots and whistle stops . . . .

Harding’s mood as he made the last preparations for his Voyage of Understanding continued morose and restless. He told [Judson] Welliver [one of Harding’s political secretaries] before leaving Washington that people he had supposed to be his friends had been “selling him all over this town, and all over the country.” But his mind was made up now to run for a second term and at the right time he would go to the country with his story of how his administration had been betrayed. “And the people will believe me,” he concluded, “when they hear that story.” [Russell, Francis, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times, McGraw Hill Book Company, 1968, page 573]

After visiting the western States, he planned to return to Washington by a U.S. Navy ship through the Panama Canal that would allow him to relax before getting back to work.

After his trip to Alaska, he traveled along the West Coast. On August 2, 1923, President died of a heart attack in San Francisco.

Although presidential historians consider Harding one of the country’s lesser leaders, highway historians give him high marks for his role in creating the Federal Highway Act of 1921. The landmark 1921 Act corrected the remaining defects in the Federal-aid highway program established in 1916 and modified in 1919 (see part 3). Under the legislation, the State highway agencies and BPR began one of the greatest road building eras in history, one that continued with some interruptions, through the 1930s, resulting in an interstate system of paved two-lane highways. The principles it established would be at the core of the program established in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 to build the modern Interstate System.

In addition, on June 19, 1922, President Warren G. Harding signed the Post Office Appropriation Act for 1923. The legislation included an unusual provision for the Federal-aid highway program that replaced the statutory phrase "providing appropriation" with "there is hereby authorized to be appropriated." Although an appropriation of the authorized funds would still be needed, the change in wording meant that the Secretary of Agriculture's approval of a Federal-aid highway project "shall be deemed a contractual obligation of the Federal Government.” In short, the Secretary's approval would “obligate" the Federal Government to pay the Federal share even though Congress had not yet approved a separate annual appropriation act for the authorized Federal-aid funds for that fiscal year. With contract authority, the State highway agencies could plan multi-year projects with the assurance they would be reimbursed for the Federal share. To this day, contract authority, signed into law by President Harding, remains a key element of the Federal-aid highway program.

Vice President Calvin Coolidge was in Vermont visiting family at the time. Because the home did not have electricity or a telephone, a messenger was dispatched to deliver the news about President Harding’s death. On August 3, Calvin Coolidge’s father, a justice of the peace, administered the oath of office to the new President.

President Coolidge’s general view was that the Federal Government should play a more limited role than it had played in recent years. He did not believe the Federal Government had a role in regulating the stock market or should help farmers through hard times. He summed up his philosophy of government in a comment to Senator James Watson of Indiana: "Senator, don't you know that four-fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still?" He earned the nickname, "the Prince of Laissez-Faire." [Smith, Gene, The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1970, page 48-50]

The new President supported highway development, but not the Federal-aid concept, which was used for highways, but also for activities as diverse as vocational education, cooperative agricultural extension work, maternity and infant hygiene, and industrial rehabilitation.

In his first Annual Message to Congress on December 5, 1923, he spoke in support of expenditures for highways:

Highways and reforestation should continue to have the interest and support of the Government. Everyone is anxious for good highways. I have made a liberal proposal in the Budget for the continuing payment to the States by the Federal Government of its share for this necessary public improvement. No expenditure of public money contributes so much to the national wealth as for building good roads.

He began speaking against Federal-aid on January 21, 1924, just 5 months after taking office. During a meeting of the Business Organization of the Government, he explained that, "There is scarcely an economic ill anywhere in our country that cannot be traced directly or indirectly to high taxes." He was in favor of sound administration as opposed to the tendency "to lapse into the old unbusinesslike and wasteful extravagance." After much thought, he had concluded that "the financial program of the Chief Executive does not contemplate expansion of these subsidies." He explained his concern:

My policy in this matter is not predicated alone on the drain which these subsidies make on the National Treasury. This of itself is sufficient to cause concern. But I am fearful that this broadening of the field of Government activities is detrimental both to the Federal and the State Governments. Efficiency of Federal operations is impaired as their scope is unduly enlarged. Efficiency of State governments is impaired as they relinquish and turn over to the Federal Government responsibilities which are rightfully theirs.

Although President Coolidge based his opposition to Federal-aid on his view of economy in government affairs and his support for lower Federal taxes, sympathetic State officials saw the debate he had launched from their perspective. Governor Albert C. Ritchie of Maryland, a Democrat who strongly opposed Federal intrusion in State affairs, joined in the denunciation of Federal-aid in a speech to the Governors' Conference at Poland Springs, Maine. After complaining that the Federal Government collected more in taxes from residents of Maryland than did the State government, he explained one of the causes for "this Federal invasion of the pocket-books of the people":

One of the contributory causes of this Federal invasion of the pocket-books of the people is maintenance of an enormous and growing overhead of bureaus and commissioners, of which some are not needed, while others should be curtailed, and still others do work and spend money for purposes which should be turned back to the states...

He particularly disliked the 50-50 Federal-aid concept that he said had begun in 1914 with Federal land grants. In fact, he considered the term a misnomer:

The Federal Government can scarcely be said to "aid" the states, when all it does is take money from the people of the states and then give it back to them again. Most certainly the Federal Government does not "aid" the states, when what it actually does is give back only a part of what it collects from them, and keep the rest to pay the cost of expensive bureaus maintained for the purpose of giving it back.

He also questioned the quality of Federal supervision:

Then the everlasting annoyance of Federal inspectors and investigators and agents, often irresponsible and incompetent, prying into business which ought to be private and into affairs which ought to be personal, and exercising supervision and demanding reports and audits of almost every conceivable kind.

He was not singling out the Federal-aid highway program, but he did point out what he considered another injustice by using roads as an example:

The charge falls on all alike. But when the money goes out of the Federal Treasury, gross discrimination is involved . . . . Maryland began her splendid system of state roads about 1910, and was far ahead of other states when Federal Aid for highways commenced in 1916. Other states have since been helped with Federal money in starting their improved road work. Maryland carried her burden alone for at least six years. [Ritchie, Albert C., "Back to States' Rights!" The World's Work, March 1924, pages 525-529]

Members of Congress contributed to the debate. Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Republican of New York, denounced Federal intervention during a Lincoln Day Dinner on February 12, 1924. He begged the audience's indulgence to comment on a proposal "for the Federal Government to contribute from its Treasury to the support of undertakings at present carried on in the several States." He was referring to "the principal [sic] of Federal aid, so called." Based on his experience in the State legislature and the United States Senate, he explained:

I know but little of the Federal Government, but enough to know that the people of this State, for example, are competent through their own government to take care of their own affairs, and that nothing in the way of efficiency will be gained from the State surrendering to the Federal Government at the price of Federal money the control of those things which they have had under their control for a century or more.

Republican Representative John Philip Hill of Maryland expressed similar views in the House during debate on December 29, 1924, regarding the Treasury and Post Office Appropriation Bill:

Most of the causes for which appropriation from the States are asked are meritorious to [sic] themselves. Those backing them are zealous, persuasive, and tireless. Once on the statute books, the States hesitate to refuse the doles; they want their share. The movement being launched, there comes insistent demand for more and more money, more and more employees, until the States awake to the fact that there is another well-intrenched Federal agency in their midst with ever-increasing activities.

On February 6, 1925, Senator William C. Bruce, Democrat of Maryland, summarized the argument against Federal-aid during debate on a bill authorizing funds for the Federal-aid highway program for FYs 1926 and 1927:

My objection to the general system of Federal aid or subsidy is . . . fundamental. In my judgment it constitutes the stealthiest, the most insidious, the most perilous, the most effective invasion of State rights that has ever been known in the history of our country. A more skillful, a more ingenious method on the part of the Federal Government of robbing the States of the full measure of their State sovereignty could not be devised; in other words, this system of Federal aid is simply an indirect, oblique method of filching from the States the domestic powers that properly appertain to them...

Like Samson when robbed of his omnipotent locks by Delilah, the people of the United States have permitted themselves to be deprived of a large portion of the State authority with which they were originally endowed . . . . I do not quarrel with any proper exercise by the Federal Government of the power to establish post roads. That is one of the objects to be subserved by the Federal power, just as much as any other object that falls within the domain of the power. I do object, however, to this system by which the Federal Government lures the State governments into the surrender of that State sovereignty, and that is not all; by which it tempts the State governments often into most imprudent, improvident, and extravagant expenditure of State funds.

BPR followed the debate closely. When Senator Simeon D. Fess, Republican of Ohio, a Federal-aid supporter, referred to BPR's program as being of the hit-or-miss variety, Chief MacDonald wrote to clarify that the program "is not on a haphazard basis, but is strictly confined to a system of roads, interstate and intercounty in character, limited to not more than 7 per cent of the total road mileage." His February 5 letter enclosed a map of the Federal-aid system of 174,350 miles, and explained that, "We are completing this system at the rate of about 9,000 miles per year." The goal, he wrote, was to do the major work of surfacing the system in a reasonable manner over the next 12 to 15 years, after which other work could be done, such as eliminating dangerous railroad crossings.

The Mississippi River, MacDonald continued, was something of a divider in highway policy. In the more populated States east of the river, Federal-aid projects involved higher types of surface, such as bituminous macadam, brick, and Portland cement concrete. West of the river, the less populated States requested assistance in "stage construction":

This means that we first do the grading and other necessary fundamental work such as the building of culverts and bridges, and pour on the surface a covering of gravel or sandclay [sic] to be used until funds are available and the traffic has reached a point where such a surface can no longer be economically maintained.

MacDonald concluded his letter with a general response to critics:

There are no arbitrary policies established with respect to the administration of Federal aid. Under the Federal Highway Act the States' rights and authority are very carefully preserved, and the question of State versus Federal rights is not raised in our actual operations. There is close cooperation between the State highway departments and the Bureau of Public Roads. Each respects the good faith and judgment of the other, and we approach the problem of road building as engineers seeking to accomplish the same objective and to be mutually helpful in this immense task.

Despite concerns about the concept, Congress approved President Coolidge's request to continue, but not expand, the Federal-aid program, with $75 million for each of FY's 1926 and 1927. The President signed the Amendment and Authorization of February 12, 1925.

(This compilation is from a file called "FEDERAL-AID (prior to 1927)" maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. It included news clippings, typed excerpts from speeches, and magazine articles on the subject. The file is part of a Vertical File of material now in the Federal Highway Administration’s Research Library, Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center)

President Coolidge would renew his opposition later in the year, but the Federal-aid highway program was too popular, especially in the western States, to kill. As Professor Bruce E. Seely put it, “for the BPR, the years between the wars were the ‘golden age’ of American road building.” [Seely, Bruce E., Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers, Temple University Press, 1987, page 68]

New Roads in Indiana

Judge Lowe wrote to The Kansas City Star in response to a recent article:

A recent article in the Star stated it was possible to drive east on hard-surfaced roads from St. Louis by way of Chicago or Indianapolis. One can go east on a hard-surface road from St., Louis to Washington and Baltimore on just one road, the National Old Trails road.

One can also go east from St. Louis to Chicago on a hard-surfaced road. To do so one must go on the National Old Trails Road to Marshall, on the east line of Illinois, then due north on the Dixie Highway to Chicago; or, to go east from Chicago, one must return to Marshall or Indianapolis and take the N.O.T. road.

The National Old Trails road never has been discovered by St. Louis nor, to large extent, by Kansas City. Yet it is the greatest asset, in my judgment, that ever has come to this state, not excepting any railroad that reaches this part of the country.

Now that we are assured of its early completion by the State Highway Board, maybe we will begin lo appreciate it more. It is more nearly completed west except in Kansas City, than most persons have any idea of unless they drive over it from Kansas City to Los Angeles. In fact, it is the only practical all-the year-round route to the Pacific, and this does not except the so-called Southern highway, which has never been started. [“Old Trails Road is Good,” The Columbia Evening Missourian, August 31, 1922, page 1]

Judge Lowe often described the National Old Trails Road as hard surfaced all the way from Baltimore-Washington to St. Louis. As noted in part 3, hard surfacing often meant a surface that required extensive maintenance, especially after a rain.

In the fall of 1922, Director John D. Williams of the Indiana State Highway Commission announced completion of a couple of projects on the National Old Trails Road, as Good Roads reported:

Twenty-two miles of hard surface pavement of 28-miles contracted in three projects on the National road between Indianapolis and the Ohio state line, and 18-miles of 35-miles contracted on the same road between Indianapolis and Terre Haute, are completed . . . .

There remains to be built this season six miles between Indianapolis and the Ohio line, and approximately 170 miles on the west end of the road. The Indianapolis-Terre Haute projects are divided into five contracts. Anticipating that weather conditions will permit the laying of concrete as late as November 15, it is reasonably certain all pavements contracted on this road east of Indianapolis will be completed this year, highway officials believe. [“New Roads in Indiana,” Good Roads, September 20, 1922, page 105]

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