Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
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 12th Street,... Continue Reading →
November 11, 1914 A meeting that would have a big and far-reaching impact on transportation throughout the United States occurred during the Fourth American Road Congress, which had commenced a couple of days earlier in Atlanta. As Motor Age magazine confirmed, Georgia’s capital city during that week was “a vortex of good roads enthusiasm.” There... Continue Reading →
October 3, 1893 The first federal road agency in the United States -- and the original predecessor to today’s U.S. Department of Transportation -- came into existence when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sterling J. Morton, under the Agricultural Appropriation Act that had been enacted earlier that year, formally established the Office of Road Inquiry (ORI). The... Continue Reading →
October 1, 1872 Henry Hooper Blood, who would earn widespread respect in the course of a high-profile career that included serving as chairman of the Utah State Road Commission – a predecessor of the present-day Utah Department of Transportation -- and president of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), was born in the... Continue Reading →
September 18, 1981 Transit entrepreneur Francis Brunner died in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 81. He had been one of the pioneers of sightseeing bus tours along Southern California’s coast -- through a segment of the Santa Monica Mountains region and near the shoreline of the Santa Monica Bay -- and was pivotal in... Continue Reading →
July 2, 1927 The Ferguson Highway was formally dedicated in the province of Ontario, Canada. The public official presiding over this inauguration of the highway on a Saturday afternoon was William Finlayson (1876-1943), Ontario’s minister of lands and forests. The 260-mile (420-kilometer)-long gravel road, which stretched from the town of Cochrane to the city of North... Continue Reading →
June 18, 1888 The ninth annual meet of the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) kicked off in Baltimore, Maryland, with 1,500 members from almost every bicycle club in the United States in attendance for the three-day event. “Baltimore to-day is to a certain extent in the hands of bicyclists,” reported that day’s edition of the New... Continue Reading →
May 24, 1915 Civil engineer Arthur Hale applied for a patent for his design of a road interchange focused on facilitating the flow of automobile traffic. Hale, who resided in the village of Rowlandsville in Maryland, characterized this design as one that contained “certain new and useful improvements in street crossings.” Hale’s proposed interchange consisted... Continue Reading →
May 21, 1901 In response to the steady increase of automobiles on its roads, the state of Connecticut enacted a pioneering speed limits law. This law required that automobiles travel no faster than 12 miles (19.3 kilometers) per hour within cities and 15 miles (24.1 kilometers) per hour on roads elsewhere. The law also required automobile drivers... Continue Reading →
Shailen P. Bhatt was officially sworn in by Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation, on January 13, 2023, to serve as head of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). This inaugural ceremony made Bhatt the 21st administrator of FHWA and the first person of Indian descent to step into that leadership position. The previous month, Bhatt... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 