1914: “A Husky Child from the Beginning” — The Association Now Known as AASHTO Makes Its Official Debut

December 12, 1914

The American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) was formally launched. Highway engineers from various states convened that Saturday morning at the Raleigh Hotel in Washington, D.C., to establish an association for addressing their priorities of mutual concern at the national level. (The now-defunct Raleigh Hotel was located at Pennsylvania Avenue and 12^th Street, N.W., across from where the city’s Old Post Office Building still stands.)

A total of 27 states were represented at that 1914 meeting. Only 17 of the states were actually represented in person by their highway commissioners or engineers, however, and the remaining 10 were represented instead by proxy. During the meeting, Henry Shirley of Maryland was selected as AASHO’s first president. On the same day as AASHOs first official meeting, a delegation from the newborn association made its way to the White House and was received there by President Woodrow Wilson. “Roads Men Visit White House,” announced a headline in one Illinois newspaper.

AASHO’s first day of existence did much to set a robust tone for the association — renamed AASHTO in 1973 — in the many years since. An especially effusive acknowledgement of the founding of AASHO took place on December 12, 1935, in Miami, Florida, during the association’s annual meeting. “Just 21 years ago this week, this organization was born,” proclaimed William Colfax Markham, AASHO’s longtime executive secretary (precursor to the current position of executive director). “It was a husky child from the beginning. Opinions as to how it should be raised were not unanimous, but today it has reached its majority, dressed in long pants, clothed, and in its right mind.” 

During a breakfast at the Raleigh Hotel four years to later to commemorate the association’s 25th anniversary, AASHO President Warren W. Mack of Delaware likewise highlighted the importance of what had occurred in 1914. He said, “As impossible as it was to foresee the coming revolution in highway transportation, I cannot but believe that those who gathered here on that December day in 1914 realized the importance of their action, and had faith that the organization which they were founding was to play a leading role in the highway destinies of our nation.”

On the occasion of the association’s 75^th anniversary in 1989, a similarly positive but decidedly more multi-modal appraisal was offered in the winning entry for a national transportation essay contest. “Highway and transportation officials and government leaders have exercised foresight and combined efforts to build the tremendous Interstate Highway System and its tributaries,” high school senior Mary Carol Jones wrote in that essay. “They have joined forces to coordinate, integrate and utilize to advantage all forms of transportation. As they have done this, America has come to the front in greatness. May it ever remain so.”

The accompanying photo, which includes many of AASHO’s founders, was taken during the organizational meeting on December 12, 1914. The individuals pictured here are as follows:

FIRST ROW (SEATED, LEFT TO RIGHT): Lamar Cobb, Arizona (Arizona), Henry G. Shirley (Maryland), Joseph Hyde Pratt (North Carolina), and Philip St. John Wilson (U.S. Office of Public Roads)

SECOND ROW (SEATED, LEFT TO RIGHT): Robert C. Terrell (Kentucky), William S. Keller (Alabama), George P. Coleman (Virginia), Edwin A. Stevens (New Jersey), Paul D. Sargent (Maine), and James R. Marker (Ohio)

BACK ROW (STANDING): Logan W. Page (U.S. Office of Public Roads), A. Dennis Williams (West Virginia), Signey Suggs (Oklahoma), George A. Ricker (New York), Charles M. Kerr (Louisiana), T. Warren Allen (New York), James H. MacDonald (Connecticut), John Craft (Alabama), William D. Sohier (Massachusetts), S. Percy Hooker (New Hamphire), J. E. Pennypacker (U.S. Office of Public Roads), and  Samuel E. Bradt (Illinois)

Photo Credit: AASHTO

For more information on the early years of AASHO (now known as AASHTO), please check out https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/septemberoctober-2014/celebrating-century-cooperation and https://centennial.transportation.org/about.html

Additional information on the history of the association’s annual meetings is available at https://aashtojournal.transportation.org/the-106-year-history-of-aashtos-annual-meeting/