Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
The first National Work Zone Awareness Week (NWZAW) was held in April 2000. It took place about four months after a memorandum of agreement (MOU) to create such a week was jointly signed by Kenneth R. Wykle, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA); Thomas R. Warne, president of AASHTO and executive director of the... Continue Reading →
To help commemorate this year’s Work Zone Safety Awareness Week, here is something about one of the more readily identifiable features of many of those road construction areas across the country: the humble but important traffic cone. Many people trace the origins of the traffic cone to 1914, which also happens to be the year... Continue Reading →
April 15, 1997 A groundbreaking ceremony was held to launch the reconstruction of Interstate 15 (I-15) in the vicinity of Salt Lake City. This project, which involved renovating 16.2 miles (26.1 kilometers) of I-15 between 600 North Street in Salt Lake City and 10600 South Street in the city of Sandy, became first major Interstate... Continue Reading →
April 2, 2017 In India, a record-setting road tunnel was formally opened in the state (now union territory) of Jammu and Kashmir by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This inaugural ceremony took place at the end of the tunnel located near the town and tehsil (administrative subdivision) of Chenani. Following the ceremony, Modi traveled in... Continue Reading →
April 1, 1913 A legislative measure creating the first highway agency in Arkansas officially went into effect. This measure had been signed into law only the day before by Acting Governor Junius Marion Futrell. (As president of the Arkansas Senate, Futrell was acting governor because of Joseph Taylor Robinson’s resignation from that office so that... Continue Reading →
March 18, 1940 With the first day of spring only a couple of days away, the California Division of Highways (part of the present-day California Department of Transportation) announced that a section of U.S. Route 50 (US 50) in the Golden State that had been blocked by snow was again available for traffic. This section... Continue Reading →
March 11, 1937 The Indiana state legislature passed a measure authorizing the Indiana State Highway Commission to work with Purdue University on methods to further improve and better maintain highways throughout the Hoosier State. (The Indiana State Highway Commission, which was established in 1917, remained in existence until being replaced by the Indiana Department of... Continue Reading →
March 9, 1985 James Evans, an engineer with the Texas Department of Transportation, spearheaded the effort to keep the roadways around his Tyler, Texas community clean of litter. He'd noticed trash flying out of the back of a pickup truck and decided to take action. Initially, he approached civic and community groups to volunteer to... Continue Reading →
February 26, 1930 The Texas Highway Commission (a predecessor of today’s Texas Transportation Commission) approved the designation of a new highway to be built through the longtime State Cemetery in the city of Austin. The origins of this cemetery in the eastern part of Texas’s state capital date back to the 1850s. The State Cemetery,... Continue Reading →
February 5, 2016 In Delaware, a groundbreaking ceremony took place for a highway project to help reduce congestion and strengthen commerce along a significant portion of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The focus of this project was on building a new version of U.S. Route 301 (US 301) in Delaware. This new 13-mile... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 