# Making Michigan Move/Chapter 2

​II
CONCRETE, FREEWAYS & MOBILITY
The highway scenario was upset by the times in 1929. The new boss was Grover C. Dillman, an excellent administrator who had worked his way up from clerk to commissioner in 20 years. The stock market crash of '29 and the Great Depression that followed uncoiled during his tenure. Roadbuilding became a public employment project in part, rescuing thousands of jobless men from pov­erty under the "New Deal" programs of the Franklin D. Roosevelt admini­stration. More than 100,000 Michi­gan men were on the highway payroll, working out welfare checks.
The age of concrete sputtered before it got off to a galloping start in the mid-1930's. The property tax col­lapsed as a source of revenue for local roads so the Legislature in 1932 voted to return all license plate fees to the counties. Auto ownership declined by more than 20 percent in the first four years of the depression. Highway travel likewise fell, and with it the tax revenues that paid for road construction and upkeep. Dillman banned the use of prison labor, substituting "reliefers" by agreement with the federal government. Federal aid money was split between the highway department and the welfare department, with county welfare agencies supplying the workers. They were put on staggered shifts in order to spread the work around the state. Times were hard, but Dillman, by prudent management, kept the high­way program going.
Other by-products of the depression were a rebellion against the weight tax and efforts of other public agencies to divert revenues for their own use. Dillman fought off both forays, although a year after he left ​ Murray D. Van Wagoner, who ran the Department from 1933 to 1940, was the only commissioner ever elected Governor of Michigan. office in 1933, later to become president of Michigan Technological University, the weight tax was re­duced from 55 cents to 35 cents per hundredweight. His strong stand against diversion of road funds cul­minated in 1938 with adoption of an amendment to the state constitution that froze 100 percent of gas and weight tax revenues for road pur­poses. He was the first commissioner to begin a program of beautifying the state highway system.
By the end of the 1930's, Michigan enjoyed a national reputation as a state with a top-rated highway sy­stem. Rising standards of profes­ionalism and growing income from federal and state sources enabled the highway department to expand and upgrade the trunkline system and make it safer and smoother for burgeoning traffic volumes. In the middle of the decade there was one car for every 3.9 residents in a population of 4.8 million.
Much of the credit for the upsurge in highway building went to Murray D. "Pat" VanWagoner, a young civil engineer from Oakland County. He succeeded Dillman in 1933 and served through 1940, the year he was elected governor–the only highway commissioner to reach that goal. An open-faced man with a wide smile and a hearty laugh, he built an agency highly conscious of public relations and preached that it needed all the dollars it was getting, and more, to ensure a good highway system. To potential raiders of the highway trust fund, VanWagoner said: "Highway engineers are technicians, not magi­cians. A highway system is a public utility and must be kept alive with tax dollars." Early in his administration, he hired G. Donald Kennedy and Lloyd B. "Dutch" Reid, fellow engineers and administrators from Oak­land County, as his top assistants.
When the use of highway revenues for other than road purposes was banned by constitutional edict in 1938, the Legislature followed up with a law that distributed gas and weight tax proceeds among the state, the counties and the cities and villages. It set the pattern for an equitable sharing of funds for state highways, county roads and municipal streets.
VanWagoner was constantly on the move, as commissioner, as president of the American Road Builders Association, as candidate for gover­nor, urging more state and federal aid for a better highway system. With Kennedy carrying out the assign­ment, he ordered a comprehensive statewide study of highway needs in Michigan, the first of its kind in the country. It laid the groundwork for Detroit's future freeway system and convinced him the state needed superhighways to meet the threat of war. A detailed study of the feasibil­ity of a bridge across the Straits of Mackinac was made. Estimated cost: $30 million. No bridge was built but a 4,085-foot causeway was extended into the straits from the northern shore west of St. Ignace. It was ​abandoned in a few years with the outbreak of World War II.
VanWagoner built the first roadside park on the state highway system and etablished the nation's first permanent highway travel information center at New Buffalo, boosting a fast-growing tourist industry. More than 3,000 picnic tables were placed along the roadside.
It was on this site on US-12 at New Buffalo that Michigan's—and the nation's—first permanent travel informa­tion lodge was opened in 1933. The lodge (above) as it appeared in 1968 was the successor to the original.
The department was paying up to $300,000 a mile to build highways in rural areas, $1.6 million in urban areas. Costs had climbed, but the roadways also were smoother and safer than ever before, thanks to constant improvement in design and engineering, materials and equipment and the fruits of research and testing. By the time VanWagoner became governor in 1941, his team had built $350 million worth of highways and had plans for a statewide system of limited access expressways.
Kennedy succeeded VanWagoner. With America's entry into World War II December 8, 1941, he was given the task of building the Willow Run and Detroit Industrial express­ways to carry workers from the Detroit area to the Ford Motor Co. bomber plant at Ypsilanti. The order from Washington: build a 14-mile, four-lane divided highway in as little time as possible. Kennedy threw
Traffic jams and stop-and-go traffic were commonplace in the pre-freeway era as millions of families became auto owners. This is US-25 (Gratiot Avenue) in Detroit just before the outbreak of World War II in 1941. ​three-fourths of his staff into the project, and called on road contrac­tors all over the state for help. Crews worked day and night, seven days a week, and the expressway was built in 11 months. Thousands of workers were able to get to and from their jobs without traffic snarls. VanWagoner dedicated the highway Sept. 12, 1942. Kennedy left his post in December to take a job in private industry and was replaced by Reid, who lost his job in 1943 with the election of Charles M. Ziegler, a civil engineer who had been deputy commissioner under Dillman.
One of the Department's greatest roadbuilding, feats was construction of the Detroit Industrial and Willow Run expressways in only 11 months in 1941–42. The 14-mile-long highway carried defense workers to and from work at a bomber plant near Ypsilanti.
Ziegler inherited some grim years for roadbuilding. Michigan's vast indust­rial resources produced one-eighth of America's entire war output and nearly four-fifths of that was trans­ported over state highways. The older ones took a terrific beating, even though auto travel declined sharply. The gasoline tax, the high­way department's only source of revenue, dropped by more than half during the war years. The department spent what money it had to keep existing highways in usable condition.
Traffic volumes jumped as soon as the war ended and auto plants began turning out cars again. A new study showed $250 million should be spent as soon as possible to meet the most pressing needs for new and improved highways, roads and streets. The state, the city of Detroit and the Wayne County Road Commission began construction of the $200 million John C. Lodge and Edsel Ford freeways in Detroit. The Legislature in 1951 passed Public Act 51, then and now the basic highway law of Michigan. The law created a separate highway trust fund which barred commingling of general state funds with road receipts and raised the gasoline tax from three to four-and-a-half cents a gallon.
It was not enough. A 1955 needs study indicated road requirements had risen to $500 million. The number of autos had more than doubled in the 10 years since the end of the war, climbing to 2.7 million, while truck registrations had risen even faster to 300,000.
Lawmakers again came to the rescue. They pegged the gasoline tax at six cents a gallon, raised fees on com­mercial vehicles and ordered the state's share of new revenue be spent on an arterial network of the more heavily traveled highways, all specified in the law. They also ​authorized the department to bond up to $850 million for highways.
Though construction programs con­tinued at a brisk pace under Ziegler, toll road advocates organized in the mid-50's to build a pay-as-you-drive highway from Toledo to Detroit and north to the Saginaw Valley. A toll road commission was named and promoted the cause for two years. Their argument: Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and Indiana had or were in the process of building east-west toll roads and Michigan should hook onto the system with a north-south route. Ziegler was cool to the idea, saying the taxpayers already had three east-west routes built or ready for construction, all toll free. The movement dissolved and Michigan, except for wooden plank roads of the 19th Century, has never had a toll road.
Ziegler, after 14 years as commis­sioner, lost a bid for reelection in 1957 and the job went to John C. Mackie, a young civil engineer from Flint. The year before, Congress had authorized construction of the biggest public works project in the history of the world—41,000 miles of interstate freeways at a projected cost of $27 billion. Michigan's share was 1,081 miles, eventually raised to 1,181 miles, and federal aid would pay 90 percent of the cost. Addition­ally, the federal goverment agreed to pay half the cost of construction and improvement of other highways on a designated federal aid system.
Mackie assumed office at a fortunate time. Ziegler and his top deputy, George Foster, and their staff had designed many of the freeways brought into the new interstate sys­tem and Michigan was ready to move quickly when federal dollars became available. Mackie hired Howard E. Hill as deputy and chief engineer and promoted him to managing director within two years. Hill had overseen the construction of military airfields and connecting channels of the Great Lakes in an 18-year career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was the department's chief executive officer, responsible for day-to-day operations.
Mackie moved fast. He reorganized the department and called for final design of new routes to fit federal standards. He also capitalized on a 1957 act that permitted extensive bonding to match federal outlays and sold the first of $700 million in highway bonds issued during the 1950's and 1960's. Right-of-way was bought and contracts were let in a great surge of activity, the likes of which had not been seen before.
John C. Mackie, who ran the Department during Michigan's greatest freeway con­struction years, was the last elected commissioner.
The goal was a network of freeways to connect every city of more than 50,000 population with four-lane, divided, limited access highways in five years. The cost: $1.2 billion. The word, "freeway," fit. The highways would have no traffic lights, no hazards from intersecting roads or roadside obstacles; curves that would easily accommodate traffic moving at 70 miles an hour in rural areas. Later, ​ More than 100 roadside parks have been developed on non-freeway highways throughout Michigan to accommodate Michigan travelers as well as out-of-state tourists. This park is located south of Sheridan on M-66 in Montcalm County. the program was revised upward to 10 years and $2 billion.
Michigan soon forged to the front among the 50 states in constructing its share of the interstate system. Between 1960 and 1970, nearly 1,000 miles were built, an average of one mile every three or four days. The state was the first to complete a border-to-border interstate—I-94, running 205 miles from Detroit to New Buffalo. Connecting links were completed to other major cities. The last mile of gravel highway on the 9,450-mile state highway system was hard-surfaced early in the decade.
No longer was travel across the state a day-long chore of driving often-crowded, two-lane highways, with slowdowns in every city and village for traffic lights and local traffic.
Travel and the number of vehicles surged upward year after year as two-and three-car families became commonplace and motorists took more and longer trips. Tourism became more and more a year-around industry and commerce and manufacturing, as well as the trucking industry serving them, became heav­ily dependent on good highways. The department adopted a "bare Congressional approval of a national interstate freeway system in 1956 triggered the greatest highway-building program in history. Michigan led the way in building its share, typified by this battery of men and machines laying pavement for I-96 in southern Michigan in 1962. ​ By the start of the 1970's, Michigan had developed a network of roadside services including more than 100 roadside parks, some 70 freeway rest areas and travel information centers. This travel information center on I-69 south of Coldwater was judged best in the nation in 1971 competition by the U.S. Department of Transportation. pavement winter maintenance policy that kept state highways driveable every day of the year. It developed one of the nation's finest networks of attrac­tively designed and landscaped free­way rest areas and roadside parks as well as a statewide system of travel information centers that now serve nearly two million visitors a year.
Off the freeway system, improve­ments large and small were made on thousands of miles of state highways. Higher safety standards and im­proved design made driving safer and easier and speeded the flow of traffic. So did new and improved materials and construction methods, traffic and safety devices and spot improvements Interstate 75 Freeway in Cheboygan County was named by Parade Magazine as the most beautiful stretch of highway built in the United States in 1963. ​that made better use of existing highways. All contributed signifi­cantly to Michigan's economic growth. By the end of the 1960's, Michigan's population had climbed to nearly nine million. Motor vehicle registrations, including cars, trucks and motorcycles, totaled five million. Miles traveled on the highway-road-street system reached 51 billion by 1970, a 60 percent increase in just 10 years.
The Legislature, responding to new and greater travel demands, enacted a "good roads" package in 1967 to bring in an additional $65 million a year. It raised the gas tax to seven cents a gallon, increased the auto license plate fee from 35 cents per hundredweight to the pre-depression rate of 55 cents and increased truck license fees about 10 percent. Before the opening of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957, crossing the Straits of Mackinac in winter could be a challenge to the heartiest.
The 1950's and 1960's also were big bridge-building years for Michigan. A special authority created by the Legislature in 1950 guided construc­tion of a long-awaited bridge connect­ing Michigan's two peninsulas at the Straits of Mackinac. The five-mile-long suspension bridge, one of the world's longest, was financed by the sale of $99.8 million in revenue bonds and was opened Nov. 1, 1957.
The department designed and built a huge double-deck lift bridge with a four-lane highway on the upper level and a railroad track on the lower level to carry US-41 across the The age-old dream of connecting Michigan's two peninsulas became reality in 1957 with the opening of the Mackinac Bridge across the Straits of Mackinac. ​Portage Lake Waterway between Houghton and Hancock. It was completed in 1959 for $11 million.
The double-deck lift bridge built across the Portage Lake waterway in the Keweenaw Peninsula has a four-lane highway on one deck, railroad track on another. It was built by the Department in 1959 for $11 million.
The International Bridge, a series of eight arch and truss spans, crossed the St. Marys River and the famed Soo Locks between the Sault Ste. Maries of Michigan and Ontario. The two-mile-long toll bridge, built by an authority, was completed in 1962, financed through the sale of bonds by the American and Canadian govern­ments, the State of Michigan and the Province of Ontario.
The biggest department-designed bridge was the 8,367-foot, 115-span high level bridge carrying the Fisher Freeway (I-75) over the Rouge River in Detroit. It was opened in 1966.
Ardale W. Ferguson of Benton Harbor—First Chairman of Michigan State High­way Commission. Despite its success, administration of the massive and successful highway program stirred criticism as early as the 1960's. Motorists felt they were getting the roads they were paying for through taxes. Some government reformers, however, believed the job of elected highway commissioner was a remnant of a bygone era, noting that Michigan was the last remaining state to have one. They favored an apppointed part-time commission to set policy for the department, which would be administered by a full-time director. Divergent public attitudes contributed to adoption of a new state constitution in 1963 which put the highway system under the jurisdiction of a four-member, bipartisan ​commission appointed by the gover­nor. The commission was empowered to select the highway director.
New freeways connected all of Michigan's larger cities, sharply reducing travel time while improving driving safety and traffic capacity. Downtown Detroit freeway sys­tem was finished in 1970. Mackie resigned early in 1965, after he had been elected to Congress from the 7th Congressional District, centered on his hometown of Flint.
The new commission, appointed by Gov. George Romney and headed by Ardale Ferguson, a Benton Harbor industrialist, named Hill director of highways and agreed to completion of the second five-year highway­ building plan. Hill resigned in 1967, to be succeeded by Henrik E. Stafseth, former engineer-manager of the Ottawa County Road Commis­sion and one of the authors of the new constitution. He stayed until 1972 when he left to become execu­tive director of the American Associ­ation of State Highway Officials in Washington. The commission filled the vacancy with Stafseth’s deputy, John P. Woodford, a career engineer in the department with broad experi­ence in various responsibilities.
Major changes were in the offing as Woodford assumed his new post. The section of the 1963 constitution setting forth the commission’s author­ity contained a clause which read "and such other public works of the state as provided by law." Those 12 words were to usher in the age of mass transit.
Advancing technology steadily improved efficiency of highway construction, exemplified by this "train" of pavement-laying machinery developed in the 1960's. It allows continuous production of steel-reinforced concrete roadways.