The formal efforts to develop what became the U.S. Numbered Highway System began at the annual 1924 meeting of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) in San Francisco.
It was at this venue that the association approved a resolution called on the U.S. secretary of Agriculture (USDA was the “umbrella” department for the Bureau of Public Roads [BPR] at this time) “ to undertake immediately the selection and designation of a comprehensive system of through interstate routes and to devise a comprehensive and uniform scheme for designating such routes in such a manner as to give them a conspicuous place among the highways of the country as roads of interstate and national significance.”
This resolution also asked the Secretary of Agriculture to appoint a joint board to be composed of members of the Bureau of Public Roads and of the State highway departments to cooperate in formulating and promulgating a system of numbering and marking highways of interstate character.” The follow-through on this request took place in Marh 1925, when USDA secretary appointed both BPR and state highway officials to serve on the newly authorized Joint Board of Interstate Highways.
The following month, this board had its first full-fledged meeting at BPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. One of the major decisions made at this gathering involved scheduling a series of regional meetings across the country whereby designated state highway officials could weigh in on the potential routes and markers for the new highway system that would essentially replace what was then the generally informal and hodgepodge network of auto trails. It was also agreed that, following the completion of those regional meetings, all the board members would reunite in the nation’s capital in early August to pick up where they left off in April.
The first of the six regional meetings was held on May 15 and 16 in San Francisco, and the final one of those gatherings took place in Boston on June 18. As confirmed by ongoing newspaper coverage of the initiatives and expectations with respect to the planned highway system, that interim of nearly seven weeks between the Boston meeting and the reconvening of the entire board in Washington hardly meant that the need for a coast-to-coast uniform highway system became a back-burner issue for the states. If anything, momentum for this system only continued to grow further in intensity and focus during that period.
This strong interest and engagement were very much in evidence in Utah, for example. This state was clearly poised by that time to improve upon the auto trails with the standardized routes and markers under development for the proposed national grid of highways. (One of the major auto trails crisscrossing this state was the Lincoln Highway; the attached photo of this still-famous route in Pennsylvania was published in 1922.)
“Utah Stands at Crossroads of Great Highways Crossing Nation,” announced a headline in the July 12 edition of the Salt Lake Tribune. The accompanying article reported that Preston G. Peterson (1884-1945), chairman of the Utah State Road Commission and a member of the board, had “just received from the secretary of the joint board a map showing the combined result of the regional conferences held by members of that board.”
This article went on to highlight what seemed to be the advantageous geographical advantages for the Beehive State as outlined in the board’s draft map. “The map shows how Utah stands at the crossroads of north-and-south, east-and-west roads in this part of the country,” noted the newspaper. “It indicates a route leading roughly from Seattle to El Paso and crossing this state, as well as the better known Zion park highway, and east-and-west highways and the Yellowstone park route.”
In this way and a host of others, states such as Utah did more than their fair share to help keep the evolving U.S. Numbered Highway System in the public spotlight throughout much of the summer of 1925 and set the stage for the next crucial step in the process for making that network a reality.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on the origins of the U.S. Numbered Highway System, please check out https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/numbers.cfm
Leave a comment