A pioneering regional system of numbered routes took shape at a meeting of highway officials from each of the six New England states in April 1922. The meeting was hosted by the Automobile Club of American (ACA) and the others in attendance included representatives from the New England Hotel Men’s Association, and the Automobile Blue Book publishing company. It was at this meeting that a plan for uniform numbered routes throughout New England was formally approved.
“The plan has passed beyond the uncertainty of a theoretical discussion,” reported the New York Times in its article about the meeting. “The benefits of a method of uniform road marking have been discussed for some time by various motor interests throughout the country.” This article further asserted, “It has long been recognized that there are too many different signs and too many color bonds used in designating routes. This multiplicity has led to confusion rather than to the imparting of quick and correct information to road users.”
The initial efforts for a shared network of route designations among the New England states can be traced to 1915. This was when the Massachusetts State Highway Commission (a predecessor of the present-day Massachusetts Department of Transportation) proposed to the other New England states and neighboring New York as well that they all adopt a uniform pole-marking plan for their respective road systems.
Under this plan, the routes were marked with colored bands on telephone poles. Red bands were used for major east-west routes, blue bands were for major north-south routes, and yellow bands applied to any diagonal or secondary routes. Ultimately, though, the goal of complete buy-in from all the states in that region for this color scheme proved to be elusive. New Hampshire and Vermont, for example, insisted that the designated routes would need to exist side-by-side with the systems already in existence in each of those states. Maine, for its part, set aside the colored bands altogether in 1919.
The replacement of color bands by numbers along the routes of New England in 1922 was reported in favorable terms by quite a few newspapers far and wide. “The New England states’ uniform numerical system of sign posting has every prospect of being adopted throughout the country,” declared the California-based Whittier News in July of that year. “At an important official gathering held at the Automobile Club of America, steps were taken to extend this new, simple system of marking highways, and a committee of eighteen was appointed to promote the plan, which is already in practical operation, Connecticut having commenced to mark a portion of the Boston Post Road.”
As this newspaper further noted, each standard marker for this system consisted of a black rendition of the assigned number in the center of a yellow background framed with a black border. The markers were painted on telephone or telegraph poles – or suitable substitutes – along the system’s routes.
O.M. Wells, identified as the “chief roadman” at ACA, took the lead in plotting out the locations for these routes and assigning each a number. A total of 36 routes, many of which are listed in the attached image printed in 1922, were rapidly put in place.
“What’s expected to develop into a uniform route marking system for the entire country has been inaugurated in New England,” reported the Arizona-based Mohave County Miner and Our Mineral Wealth in November 1922. “Roads hitherto marked by lines and symbols that confused rather than helped motorists are being numbered so that no doubt may arise in the mind of strangers as to the correctness of their routes.”
This newspaper went on to state, “Red, blue and yellow bands are being painted out in Massachusetts. The various markings along the New Hampshire roads are disappearing and the individual state highway designations in Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut are giving way to the new system.”
A newer system and a nationwide one at that, of course, came into existence just a few years later with the official approval and introduction of the United States Numbered Highway System. Several of that system’s routes ended up supplanting many of those that had formed the New England Road Marking System. Remnants of that older system are still with us today, however. The general course of U.S. Route 1 in the northeastern corner of the United States, for example, follows what had once been New England Route 1.
Image Credit: Public Domain
Additional information on the New England Road Marking System is available at Eastern States Start Uniform Road Marking – Humboldt Times – April 1922 — Humboldt Times 23 April 1922 — California Digital Newspaper Collection
Transportation History 
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