The National Old Trails Road 

Part 1: The Quest for a National Road 

by 

Richard F. Weingroff

The idea of a transcontinental highway had been around since the 1890's. 

General Roy Stone, head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of 

Road Inquiry (first ancestor of the Federal Highway Administration 

(FHWA)), suggested combining existing roads into a network and 

recommended that ". . . the most effective lines that could be adopted for 

this purpose would be an Atlantic and a Pacific Coast line, joined by a 

continental highway from Washington to San Francisco." The 

transcontinental route should link highways along the East and West 

Coasts. The League of American Wheelmen Bulletin and Good Roads

magazine (November 19, 1987), quoted General Stone as referring to the 

idea as "The Great Road of America." He knew his idea was too bold to 

be adopted at the time, but he explained: 

The whole scheme would carry with it something that would 

inspire the entire Nation. It not any new scheme; it is not any 

new idea. It was the idea of Jefferson and Madison and 

Gallatin and many other great men who helped to start the 

national Road which led through Pennsylvania, Ohio and 

Indiana, and reached as far as the Mississippi River. 

General Stone's successor, Martin Dodge, had endorsed the idea of a 

transcontinental highway shortly after taking office in 1899. 

On March 4, 1902, nine auto clubs met in Chicago to combine forces in a 

new organization called the American Automobile Association (AAA). The 

new Board of Directors was instructed to begin immediate consideration of 

a transcontinental road from New York to California. The board chose a 

more northern routing than General Stone had proposed. The AAA 

proposal was for a macadamized road north out of New York City along 

the Hudson River and the shores of the Great Lakes passing through 

Albany and Buffalo, New York; Erie, Pennsylvania; Cleveland and Toledo, 

Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska; Denver, Colorado; Salt Lake 

City; Utah, and Sacramento, California. 

An editorial in the May 1902 issue of Good Roads magazine considered 

the proposal an improvement over General Stone's idea because "it 

passes through many large and enterprising cities over a route a large 

portion of which already has improved roads and over which there will be 
an increasing volume of travel." Nevertheless, the editor, H. W. Perry, 

could not heartily endorse the plan. "The reason why a New York to 

Sacramento or San Francisco wagon road will not appeal to the public is 

because there is no need for such a road." The editor added, "The plan of 

a transcontinental highway is spectacular; but Congress cannot be 

induced to support a spectacle." Perry concluded: 

Let the States and the counties be the judges of where those 

improved roads shall be built. They can be depended upon 

to act wisely in the matter, and, if the course of travel and 

commerce demands that the roads from city to city between 

New York and San Francisco need macadamizing all the 

way, or that the necessities require the building of expensive 

roads from the capital of each State to the capitals of every 

neighboring State before the shorter roads tributary to the 

shipping points are made passable, we may be sure that the 

long roads will receive attention. 

On June 23, 1905, James W. Abbott, Special Agent (Mountain and Pacific 

Coast Division) for the U.S. Office of Public Road Inquiries, told the Fifth 

Annual National Good Roads Convention in Portland, Oregon, "We ought 

to have established one or more good through wagon roads from the 

Atlantic to San Francisco, and to the Northwest." He cited the proposal by 

Martin Dodge at a Good Roads Convention in Denver 5 years earlier: 

[Dodge] delivered a memorable address, of which the 

controlling thought was this great need for such highways. A 

short time before that a wild and visionary article had 

appeared in one of the magazines, advocating a boulevard 

200 feet wide from ocean to ocean, with its separate 

divisions for vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, trees, grass, 

flowers, and I don't know what else. Senator Dodge's 

address was practical and timely. 

In August 1906, Good Roads magazine published an article about a 

proposal to build an "American Appian Way." This "latest proposition in 

this land of big schemes" was routed from " Washington, on Atlantic 

tidewater, following the trail of the historic National Pike through the 

passes of the Appalachians and across the Ohio, through the great middle 

west to St. Louis, and then into two great boulevards on to the Pacific, one 

of which will cross Montana to Puget Sound and the other through Denver 

and Salt Lake over the Rockies and Sierras to San Francisco." The article 

describing the proposal stated: 
Automobile associations and good roads folks all over the 

country are pledged to the support of the bill. "Honk! Honk!" 

is the war cry of the new movement. 

Early advocates of good roads, while advocating long distance roads, 

soon adopted the idea of naming highways and forming associations to 

support the route. In early 1902, the Jefferson Memorial Road Association 

began promoting construction of a memorial road from Thomas

Jefferson's home at Monticello to the University of Virginia in 

Charlottesville, the university he founded. The New York-Chicago Road 

Association formed on June 17, 1902, to advocate an improved public 

road between the two cities of its name. The July 1902 issue of Good 

Roads explained that ". . . the plan is to connect the present good roads 

along the route with new ones to be built by the states, counties and 

municipalities along the line."

By the 1910s, local organizations, chambers of commerce, towns, and 

good roads advocates throughout the country began to select old roads 

for improvement and to give them names as a rallying point. One of the 

earliest was the National Old Trails Road, which was an outgrowth of two 

movements in Missouri. The first was the drive for a cross-State highway 

from St. Louis to Kansas City. The second was an effort by the State 

chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D. A. R.) to mark 

the historic Santa Fe Trail, the old trader's route to New Mexico. 

The Missouri Cross-State Highway

In the summer of 1907, Governor Joseph W. Folk of Missouri expressed 

an interest in a cross-State macadam highway. The Highway Department 

of the State Board of Agriculture identified three feasible routes. The 

northern route passed through St. Charles, Louisiana, Bowling Green, 

Mexico, Moberly, and Liberty. The central route passed through Columbia, 

crossing the Missouri River at Arrow Rock on the way to Kansas City. It 

incorporated Boon's Lick Road and part of the Santa Fe Trail. The 

southern route approximates modern U.S. 50. 

The State Board and Governor Folk met on August 5, 1907, to designate 

the cross-State highway. Instead of choosing one, though, they 

designated all three routes. While this decision encouraged local initiative 

by keeping competition alive, it did not result in construction of a crossState highway. The "idea slumbered," according to the State Board's 

September 1911 bulletin, until 1911: 

Various newspapers gave space in helping keep alive the 

movement. The Kansas City Star and Kansas City Post 

especially are to be commended for the stand taken and for 
being consistent "boosters" for a cross - state highway. 

During this time the lovers of history and admirers of 

romance joined in the fight. This was on account of the 

historic route, over which Daniel Boone and pioneers of the 

West blazed their way and around which linger many 

pleasing tales of pioneer times, being one of the practical 

routes for a state highway. This brought the Santa Fe Trail 

and Boone's Lick Road Association, the Kansas City 

Historical Society, the Missouri Historical Society, and the 

Daughters of the American Revolution into the fight. The 

work of the latter was directed, however, more towards the 

placing of markers along the historical trail. 

By 1911, the idea of a transcontinental highway was receiving increasing 

attention. The Fourth International Good Roads Congress, meeting in 

Chicago, endorsed a transcontinental route from New York City through 

Chicago to Kansas City, thence over the historic Santa Fe Trail to Santa 

Fe, New Mexico, and continuing to Phoenix and Los Angeles. Dozens of 

good roads bills were introduced in the 62nd Congress (1911-12). Some 

involved a specific road proposal, such as S. 6271, which would have 

authorized construction of a national highway from the Canadian border 

south of Winnipeg to Galveston, Texas, or the bill that would have 

authorized $10,000 to build a road through the Medicine Bow Forest 

Reserve in Colorado. 

Among the more ambitious bills was one introduced by Senator Shelby 

Moore Cullom of Illinois on August 11, 1911, to create a National 

Interstate Highways and Good Roads Commission to build seven named 

national highways radiating from Washington. The plan included a road 

from Washington to Seattle, Washington (Lincoln National Interstate 

Highway) and two roads to California (Jefferson National Interstate 

Highway to northern California and the Grant National Interstate Highway 

to southern California) as well as shorter routes to Portland, Maine 

(Washington); Niagara Falls, New York (Roosevelt); Austin, Texas 

(Monroe); and Miami, Florida (Lee). (One critic, Representative Michael E. 

Driscoll of New York, dismissed the flood of good roads bills, complaining 

that all of them came from "the great broad states in the South and West 

of large areas, long roads, small populations, and small taxing power." 

With interest growing, several States decided to take it upon themselves 

to identify the best route within their borders for a transcontinental 

highway. These State efforts grew out of the belief that, someday, such a 

road would be built. Designation of the route in advance, they thought, 

would give the State control over the location. 
In 1911, therefore, Governor Herbert S. Hadley revived the idea of a 

single cross-State highway from among the three chosen in 1907. 

Communities along the three lines understood the importance of the 

decision: 

It meant that if the route was selected and put through, that 

not only would portions of the state be visited by many 

people and that this would be a link in the some-time Ocean 

to Ocean Route, but it meant the stimulation of a sentiment 

for good roads in Missouri that in the course of a few more 

years would bring about a great upheaval in this state which 

would mean the building of highways that would connect 

with this route. 

During July 1911, a delegation headed by Governor Hadley inspected the 

three routes. Communities outdid each other in welcoming the inspectors, 

in the hope of securing the designation: 

It is impossible to bring in all of the roads lined with bunting, 

the gate posts decorated with flags, garlands of flowers and 

farm produce; the crowds of people gathered at the country 

schoolhouses that had not been open since the closing of 

the sessions, of the barrels almost bursting with ice-cold 

lemonade; the tables "groaning" with fried chicken, Missouri 

ham, cake and ice cream, and dainties known only to 

Missouri housewives. As one member of the party 

expressed the trip, they "literally ate their way through fried 

chicken and ham." 

On August 11, 1911, 1,600 delegates filled the Jefferson Theatre in 

Jefferson City for a meeting on the issue. Each of the three routes was 

defended in speeches. Dean Walter Williams of the School of Journalism, 

University of Missouri, spoke on behalf of the Central Route: 

I have no word of criticism of any other route that may be 

proposed. But as for me and mine . . . we are for the Boon's 

Lick Road and the Santa Fe Trail. May I add that we are not 

polygamists either. We do not want to tie up the affections of 

Missouri to three Cross-State Highways . . . . We want no 

cut-offs in ours. I am for the Boon's Lick Road and Santa Fe 

Trail, the Old Trails Route . . . . 

A few days later, State Highway Engineer Curtis Hill submitted a summary 

of the three alternatives to the State Board. One factor that Hill cited in 

favor of the central route was his view that the Old Trails Route had 

already been selected as part of a transcontinental highway: 
The trans-continental route which would cross Missouri is 

the proposed extension from Washington to San Francisco 

of the Old Cumberland Turnpike and the route is termed the 

Ocean to Ocean Highway. The Old Cumberland Turnpike 

was originally surveyed to St. Louis, which is the logical 

place for it, and either of our proposed cross-state roads 

would be available. This Ocean to Ocean Highway, however, 

is now routed by the U.S. Office of Public Roads over the 

Old Boon's Lick Road or our Central Route. 

This was a misstatement. The Office of Public Roads (another of the 

FHWA's early names) had not routed the transcontinental highway. 

Shortly before Hill prepared his report, the Office had published a map of 

nearly 15,000 miles of transcontinental, interstate, and trunk line roads 

contemplated around the country. Reporting on the map, Better Roads

magazine (August 1911) pointed out that if the plans were fulfilled, they 

would result in "a network covering the whole country." The routes 

depicted on the map were: 

Capital-to-Capital Highway (Washington, D.C., to 

Jacksonville, Florida) 

Central Highway in North Carolina 

Clay-Jefferson Memorial (Niagara Falls, New York, to 

Meridian, Mississippi) 

Des Moines-Kansas City-St. Joseph Trail 

Dupont Highway in Delaware 

Lincoln Memorial Road (Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg, 

Pennsylvania) 

Lincoln Way (Louisville to Nashville, Kentucky) 

Memphis-to-Bristol Highway 

Montreal-to-Miami Highway 

Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Pacific Highway 

Rio-to-Rio Highway (Denison to Galveston, Texas) 

Yellowstone to Glacier National Park 

The route Hill had in mind was the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, described 

as: 

Ocean to Ocean Highway, extending from Cumberland, Md., 

to Tacoma, Wash., and passing over the old Cumberland 

Road, through Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, over 

Boone's Lick Trail and St. Louis to Old Franklin, Mo.; through 

Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. 3,800 

miles. 
The Office did not endorse the route. As Better Roads explained, the 

Office had published the map ". . . merely for the purpose of gauging the 

extent of the good roads movement as fostered by individuals, 

associations, and communities." 

After Hill's report had been adopted, the members of the State Board 

designated the central route as "The Missouri Cross State Highway--Old 

Trails Road." The cross-State route was dedicated on October 28, 1911. 

Dedication parties left St. Louis and Kansas City, to meet in Columbia for 

the ceremony. Governor Hadley delivered the dedicatory address, in 

which he said: 

This marks the beginning of the end of bad roads in 

Missouri. The people who are building this road are as truly 

pioneers as those hardy frontiersmen who blazed the Old 

Trails Route into the forests and over broad prairies . . . . 

With great pleasure in the present occasion, and with hopes 

for the future, I now dedicate the Old Trails Route the 

Missouri Cross State Highway, to the men and women of 

Missouri of the present and the future. 

The Woman's Old Trails Road 

In 1911, Miss Elizabeth Butler Gentry of the 

D.A.R. copyrighted a publication titled: 

The Old Trails Road,

The National Highway.

A Memorial to the Pioneer Men and Women. 

A Suggestion of the Missouri Good Roads 

Committee 

Daughters of the American Revolution. 

Miss Gentry, Jackson County's Chairman of the 

Missouri Good Roads Committee, described the 

proposed project: 

The historic old trails, comprising this project, are: the old 

National or Cumberland Road, which includes the 

Braddock's or Washington Road; the Boon's Lick Road; 

Santa Fe Trail; Kearny's Road; Oregon Trail. 

She explained the origins of the movement: 

The Missouri Good Roads Committee had planned a 

woman's national movement to awaken interest in a national 

Miss Elizabeth Gentry
highway from ocean to ocean, along the old trails of the 

nation's pioneers . . . . T he Kansas City Chapter, Santa Fe 

Trail Committee [of the D. A. R], first suggested to and urged 

upon the Governor and State Highway Engineer of Missouri 

that the old trails of the State should be reblazed into 

modern roads as a monument to the pioneers of the State. 

Due to five years of untiring efforts, this committee is 

acknowledged by the State Board of Agriculture as the vital 

force that carried this project to its culmination and 

dedication as the Missouri State Highway--the Old Trails 

Road--on Oct. 28th, 1911. 

The Missouri Good Roads Committee, appointed by the 

State Regent, was the result of this achievement. The dream 

of this committee is to make the Missouri highway, but a link 

in a national highway--to extend the Old Trails eastward over 

the Old National Road to Washington; westward over the old 

Santa Fe Trail and Kearny's Road to San Francisco; northwestward over the Oregon Trail to Olympia . . . . The women 

of the seventeen Trail States will be vitally interested and the 

women of other states will see the value to human welfare of 

a national good road, which will serve to unify and bind 

together the D. A. R. interests of the country. 

As the Missouri Good Roads Committee has originated this 

movement . . . it will act as a central and directing committee 

for the national work . . . . A prominent D. A. R. in each state 

will be invited to be chairman of this work in her state . . . . A 

meeting of this committee is hereby called in the Missouri 

Room, Continental Memorial Hall, Washington, D.C., second 

day of D. A. R. Congress, 1912, at 3 o'clock 

Miss Gentry's publication listed members of an Advisory Committee to the 

Missouri Good Roads Committee. Judge J. M. Lowe of Kansas City was 

the Chairman (in Missouri, a "Judge" was the equivalent of a County 

Executive, not a judge of law). Members included: 

• Professor Williams; 

• Logan Waller Page, Director of the Office of Public Roads; 

• Col. Wm. F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody of North Platte, Nebraska; 

• Ezra Meeker, who had traveled to Oregon in a covered wagon in 

1852, and duplicated the trip in reverse to publicize the historic trail 

in 1906; 

• The Governors of Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New 

Mexico, and Wyoming; 

• U.S. Representatives Champ Clark and William P. Borland (MO.). 
The pamphlet estimated the cost of the project: 

The cost per mile of highway is variously estimated, owing to 

prairie or mountain country, proximity to road materials, etc., 

at from $4,000 to $10,000 a mile. As there are about 5000 

miles of road in this project, it calls for an expenditure of fifty 

million dollars. 

The goal was to have Congress designate the route for Federal 

construction: 

A bill has been prepared at the request of the Missouri 

Committee and will be introduced in Congress sometime 

during December, 1911, by Congressman Wm. P. Borland, 

of Kansas City, Mo. 

Each state committee should instruct its members to write 

their senators and representatives at Washington, asking 

them to vote for the Historic Trails Bill of the D. A. R. To 

carry this women's measure, it should be emphasized, that 

the interest is non-political, non-commercial; purely historic, 

patriotic, entirely practicable and of national value . . . . 

The D. A. R. of each trail state should insist that the trail be 

adopted as their state highway. Fifty road bills are before 

Congress. It will take a strong and united effort by the D. A. 

R. to win out. 

The map in the pamphlet showed the contemplated road. The Oregon 

Trail branched off the Santa Fe Trail in Gardner, Kansas, just as the 

original trails had separated. At Fort Hall, the California Trail to San 

Francisco split from the Oregon Trail, again as had the historic trail. The 

Old Trails Road also followed the Santa Fe Trail and its Cimarron Cut-Off, 

the short-cut through a territory with less access to water and more danger 

from Native Americans than on the main line. 

The two routes connected south of Raton, New Mexico, then continued 

through Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Gallup. In Arizona, the road passed 

through Holbrook and Flagstaff before turning southwest to Prescott and 

south to Phoenix. From Phoenix, it moved west again to Yuma and San 

Diego. The trail ran up the West Coast to link with the California Trail in 

San Francisco. The map identified the route through the Southwest as 

"Kearneys Route Santa Fe to Monterey & link to San Francisco." 

General Stephen Watts Kearny was in charge of the Army of the West 

during the Mexican War in 1846. He was ordered to take over California 
and set up a temporary civil government. After following the Santa Fe Trail 

from Missouri, Kearny easily captured Santa Fe; Governor Manuel Armijo 

surrendered without a shot being fired. On September 24, 1846, the Army 

of the West set off to complete the defeat of the Mexican forces in 

California. 

Miss Gentry's map was inaccurate in depicting the route followed. Kearny 

did not follow a route through Gallup, Flagstaff, and Prescott. He moved 

south from Santa Fe along the Rio Grande River on the ancient Spanish 

trail known as El Camino Real (The King's Highway). In Socorro, New 

Mexico, he met his friend Lieutenant Christopher "Kit" Carson, who was 

returning from California with the news-somewhat premature, as it turned 

out-that California had been conquered by the combined forces of Captain 

Robert F. Stockton and Lieutenant John C. Fremont. After reducing the 

size of his force to little more than an escort, Kearny convinced Lieutenant 

Carson (who had been ordered to take dispatches to Washington) to take 

the small expedition to California over a route Carson had not only helped 

open but had just traveled. 

From Soccoro, Carson led the force west to the Gila River and followed it 

to the Pima Villages near where the city of Phoenix would be established 

in the 1860's. Still generally following the Gila River, they continued to the 

future site of Yuma at the Colorado River. After fording the river, Kearny 

led his men across the southern California desert amid considerable 

hardship. On the plain of San Pascual near present day Escondido, 

Mexican soldiers under Don Mariana Flores attacked the small American 

force. Kearny, although wounded in the fighting, held out for 4 days before 

being rescued by troops from San Diego. Kearny finally reached San 

Diego on December 12. (Kearny and forces from San Diego defeated 

Governor Pio Pico at the Battle of San Gabriel on January 8-9, 1847. 

Hostilities ended a few days later. The Mexican government surrendered 

control of California to the United States by approving the Treaty of 

Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.) 

Miss Gentry's pamphlet concluded with a section headed "D.A. R. Motor 

Trip to Panama Exposition in 1915": 

Mr. and Mrs. Thos W. Wilby, of New York and Washington, 

have just finished a motor round-trip of these trails-10,000 

miles-to lay out and log the road for the Government. They 

praised the scenic beauty and historic value of these trails, 

their practicability and charm for motor travel. 

The fascination of the road is known to all travelers, whether 

it be by camel, stage coach or motor car, and the call of the 
road to its lovers is as insistent a note as the call of the sea 

to the sailor or the call of the desert to the Arab. 

What more delightful than a D.A.R. automobile pilgrimage 

over the Old Trails Road to the Panama Exposition in San 

Francisco in 1915? Visits could be made to historic places 

enroute and at famous old taverns, reviving the life of the old 

trails. To achieve success in this mutually beneficial project it 

will mean several years of splendid cooperative work. The 

dream of Missouri women will come true, through the help of 

women of other states in preserving the old trails and the 

historic spirit of the nation. 

Wilby was a Special Agent of the Office of Public Roads. The Office 

designated unpaid travelers as "Special Agents" to examine roads, take 

photographs of them, and report on conditions, type of construction, and 

economic facts. The Office, in some cases, provided photographic 

equipment. 

As Special Agent, Wilby described his mission as laying out and charting 

two transcontinental roads, as well as conducting an inspection tour. Wilby 

and his wife Agnes traveled in a touring car manufactured by the OhiO 

Motor Car Company and driven by Fred D. Clark. (Transcontinental 

tourists during this period often employed drivers.) The car was 

nicknamed the "Mud Hen" based on its successful experience in the 

Munsey Tour of 1910. Clark was a well-known driver who had completed 

a heavily publicized 4,767-mile trip that began in New York City on 

November 22, 1910, and ended in San Francisco, via a southern route, on 

January 14, 1911. "No automobilist," publicist Guy Finney of the OhiO 

Motor Company wrote, "completing an extended journey need now hold 

back for fear of 'the unknown.'" 

The Wilbys began their trip in New York and went by way of Chicago, 

Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Wyoming; 

Ogden, Utah; Reno, Nevada; and Sacramento, to San Francisco. The 

route was designated the "Pioneer Highway," an informal name applied to 

the route by auto clubs. They toured south to San Diego, then headed 

west via Phoenix and Santa Fe to La Junta, Colorado; then to Hutchinson 

and Emporia, Kansas; Columbia and St. Louis, Missouri; Indianapolis, 

Indiana; Wheeling, West Virginia; Cumberland, Maryland; Washington, 

D.C.; and Baltimore, Maryland, to New York via Philadelphia and Atlantic 

City. The Wilbys' southern route was "The Old Trails Highway." Neither 

route was supported by the Office of Public Roads, which was not 

promoting such projects . 
According to the January 1912 issue of Touring Topics magazine, this trip 

was the first time a woman had made a double transcontinental tour by 

automobile. Mrs. Wilby told the writer that the 105-day trip had been 

delightful, with the beauties of the country affording ample compensation 

for the "few slight discomforts" of the trip. Mr. Wilby was especially 

encouraged by the enthusiasm he encountered for good roads: 

Few motorists in the east have any idea not only of the 

enthusiasm, but of the general hard and effective work being 

done in the western and southwestern states for good roads. 

At every point I found much enthusiasm for highway 

improvement, the state officials and highway authorities 

assuring me that appropriations, running in to the millions, 

would soon be available for the surveying and building of 

trunk lines through their commonwealths. 

After returning to New York, Wilby took the time on January 20, 1912, to 

write to Missouri's Curtis Hill. Wilby reported that he had completed his trip 

in 105 days, during which he laid out and charted two feasible 

transcontinental routes. He was concerned that wherever he went, the 

interest in good roads was "purely local," when he believed, "The 

Trascontinental Highways are of First importance." Moreover, time was 

being wasted waiting for Federal-aid: 

Let organized effort still be directed towards inducing 

Congress to vote money for National Highways, but let it not 

be forgotten that the people have already taken the initial 

steps in this work . . . . Any scheme for State Highways 

which do not form a direct link in the Transcontinental chain 

must be secondary. Time enough for those others when the 

Great Transcontinental Highways, forming the longest and 

most wonderful sightseeing thoroughfares known, shall be 

an accomplished feat. 

The Old Trails Road, which he called "American History crystallized," 

seemed to him an ideal transcontinental road: 

Who with the red blood of national pride within him does not 

thrill at the thought of such roads as these! They are surely 

highways worthy of the American people. 

An article in the December 1911 issue of Southern Good Roads described 

"The Woman's National Old Trail Roads Association": 

A movement initiated by Miss Elizabeth Butler and other 

women of the Missouri Daughters of the American 
Revolution has resulted in the formation of the Woman's 

National Old Trail Roads Association, the first national good 

roads association to be composed exclusively of women . . . 

. It is planned to make the proposed national highway a 

project in which every woman in the United States will be 

interested. 

The national highway will start at Washington, D.C., [and 

follow the old trails to Santa Fe]. There will be two routes to 

San Francisco. One, the Southern, over Kearney road, 

through Phoenix, Ariz., and Monterey, Cal., the other, the 

Northern route, will lead from Gardner, Kansas., to Fort Hall, 

Ida., and finally to San Francisco. A third route may be 

established from Fort Hall to Olympia, Washington, over the 

old Oregon trail, made famous of late by Ezra Meeker of 

Portland, whose ox team drive over it was a picturesque 

event in 1906. 

The Old Trails Association of Missouri 

The next issue of Southern Good Roads (January 

1912) described organization of a new group, the 

Old Trails Association of Missouri. The 

organizational meeting took place on December 

19, 1911, in the Commercial Club Rooms in 

Kansas City: 

Fifty delegates representing several 

counties, assembled at the call of Prof. 

Walter Williams . . . . Mr. Williams was 

chosen president of the association. 

Judge Lowe was a member of the Executive Committee. 

The participants unanimously adopted a resolution on the purpose of the 

organization: 

Section 1. Resolved, That it is the sense of this meeting that 

steps be taken toward the formation of a Transcontinental 

Highway Association, extending from the cities of 

Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, along the line of the Old 

Cumberland Pike, through the States of Maryland, West 

Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to the city 

of St. Louis; thence west along the Old Trails Route, 

consisting of Boone's Lick Road and Santa Fe Trail, as near 

as practicable to Kansas City, Mo.; thence along the line of 

Prof. Walter Williams
the Santa Fe Trail through Kansas and Colorado to Santa 

Fe, N.M.; and thence along the line of the Sunset Route, 

through New Mexico, Arizona, and California. 

Section 2. Resolved, That the Governors of all the States 

through which the above-designated road shall run be 

requested to select delegates from the commercial 

organizations and Good Road Association along the line of 

said roads of their respective States to meet at Kansas City, 

Mo., on _____ day of , for the purpose of perfecting a 

National Organization. 

The date was to be filled in later. 

The Southern Good Roads article discussed the purpose of the new 

group: 

The meeting was the first step toward what Mr. Williams 

believes will become a great transcontinental highway . . . . 

Many of the roads included in the transcontinental project 

have important branches, such as the Oregon trail, which 

branches from the Santa Fe trail. It is the plan of the 

association to place markers at such points. The markers 

also will be placed at all points of historic interest along the 

various trails. 

A. L. Westgard And The Trail To Sunset 

The "Sunset Route" was more correctly called the Trail to Sunset. This 

was an early named trail between Chicago and Los Angeles. It was 

established in 1910 by A. L. Westgard on behalf of his recently organized 

Touring Club of America. 

Westgard, the premier "pathfinder" of the early automobile days, was born 

in Norway in 1865 and came to the United States in 1883. He began his 

career as a surveyor doing railroad, municipal, and land work in the 

Southwest. His jobs included location work for the Atchison, Topeka, and 

Santa Fe Railroad. From 1892 to 1905, Westgard had been in charge of a 

corps of engineers working in all the States east of the Rocky Mountains. 

The corps prepared State, county, and town maps and atlases. His 

information helped the early bicycle tourists, but proved especially useful 

when the automobile age began. 

During the first 2 decades of the 20th century, Westgard repeatedly 

traveled across country seeking good touring roads. He documented them 

for other motorists in maps, photographs, and motion pictures. He was a 
Special Agent of the Office of Public Roads at times, and worked for 

several motoring and road organizations beginning in 1905. In 1912, 

Westgard Pass in California was named after him (on today's State Route 

168 in the Inyo National Forest). The title of an article about Westgard by 

Arthur Manchester in the June 1989 issue of Car Collector and Car 

Classics conveys a sense of his last 15 years: "A Marco Polo of The Motor 

Age." While on the dedication tour for the National Park-to-Park Highway 

in 1920, he became ill while passing through Spokane, Washington, 

traveled by train to Oakland, California, for surgery, but died on April 3, 

1921. 

A 1911 AAA booklet of strip maps of the "Trail to Sunset Transcontinental 

Automobile Route" shows the route. According to the booklet, "The route 

for the Trail to Sunset has been carefully and deliberately chosen from a 

strictly touring standpoint, offering the most varied and numerous points of 

historic interest." Like future U.S. 66, the Trail to Sunset began at Jackson 

and Michigan Boulevards in Chicago. However, the Trail to Sunset 

continued west out of the city to La Grange, unlike U.S. 66, which turned 

southwest at Ogden Avenue. The trail crossed Iowa on the River-to-River 

Road (future U.S. 6), and joined the future National Old Trails Road in 

Lyons, Kansas. The two routes separated at McCartys, New Mexico, with 

the Trail to Sunset going through Phoenix before breaking into two 

branches, via Yuma, Arizona, and Blythe, California, on the way to Los 

Angeles. 

The cover noted that the booklet was based on Westgard's notes. 

Westgard compiled the notes for the strip maps, including information on 

road conditions. For example, he noted that asphalt pavement ended at 

Madison Street in Chicago. He found graded dirt roads in Kansas. In New 

Mexico, he encountered such features as a "Ford (Sandy Bottom)" and 

"Heavy Sand." He finally encountered a "Fine macadam Boulevard," at 

Redlands, California, and followed macadam roads, "Well Signposted," all 

the way into Los Angeles. The Trail to Sunset ended at the intersection of 

Main and Spring Street in Los Angeles. 

Westgard being primarily a pathfinder, the Trail to Sunset did not follow 

the later pattern for named trails. It did not have a backing organization to 

promote its improvement and use. As a result, it soon lost its identity as an 

interstate trail. In October 1917, The Road-Maker printed a AAA summary 

of national tourist roads, including the Trail to Sunset, but noted: 

. . . starts at Chicago and runs to Los Angeles along the 

Santa Fe trail and across New Mexico and Arizona to 

Southern California, thence north to San Francisco . . . . The 

original line of the Trail to Sunset was through Albuquerque, 

Globe, Phoenix and Yuma, the way it is largely traveled 
today; but more lately there has been developed a new and 

shorter connection from Albuquerque through Holbrook, 

Flagstaff, Williams, Needles and San Bernardino to Los 

Angeles . . . . This route . . . will probably divide future traffic 

about evenly with the older way through Phoenix and Yuma. 

The "new and shorter connection" was better known by 1917 as the 

National Old Trails Road and became U.S. 66 in 1926. 

The Trail to Sunset inspired a novel that was published in March 1912 by 

Moffat, Yard and Company. On the Trail to Sunset was written by Special 

Agent Thomas W. Wilby and his wife Agnes and illustrated with photos 

from their transcontinental trips . In it, an idealistic journalist accompanied 

his globetrotting Uncle John Eastcott, John's wife Nell, and a chauffeur on 

a trailblazing trip along the Trail to Sunset. A newspaper in New York 

heralded the trip: 

WELL-KNOWN GLOBE-TROTTER TO CONQUER THE WEST! 

JOHN EASTCOTT TO BLAZE A TRAIL ACROSS BY AUTOMOBILE 

AND END THE MONOPOLY OF THE RAILROAD! 

The novel included a romantic interest, a revolutionary movement to 

remove the Southwest from American control, sabotage of the 

transcontinental journey, an Indian attack, and a car chase along rough 

northeastern New Mexico roads at speeds exceeding 20 miles per hour. In 

the end, the young man wins his true love, the Southwest remains part of 

the United States, and the transcontinental pathfinding trip is a success. 

In RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative (University of Nebraska 

Press, 1997), Kris Lackey critiqued On the Trail to Sunset. He described it 

as "a preposterous throwback, and its reactionary colonialism, depicting 

Hispanics as wild-eyed fanatics and Native Americans as childish, 

defeated savages, lacks the revisionist romanticism of later nonfiction 

narratives." Lackey concluded by explaining the point of the novel, as he 

saw it, namely that a cultivated Easterner can "muster virility enough" to 

defeat his native rivals, "thus insuring the right and proper march of Anglo 

civilization into the recesses of the continent." In short, it wasn't a very 

good novel. 

The Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association 

The day after the Old Trails Association of Missouri was formed, the TriState Road Convention was held in Phoenix on December 20-21, 1911. 

The organization was based in Arizona, California, and New Mexico, with 

the Governors of each State appointing the delegates. As in Missouri, 

officials in the Southwest wanted to influence what they anticipated would 
be Federal decisions on transcontinental highway routings. John S. 

Mitchell of Los Angeles was elected president, with J. S. Cornwell, also of 

Los Angeles, the treasurer. The secretary was George Purdy Bullard of 

Phoenix. 

The new organization had to address efforts by San Diego boosters who 

had been fighting for years regarding highway routing between Phoenix 

and Los Angeles. Early automobile traffic between the two cities went via 

San Diego and Yuma across the difficult roads of the Imperial Valley. San 

Diego interests, fearing their city would become a backwater if 

transcontinental traffic went directly from Yuma to Los Angeles, had 

identified a routing that would become U.S. 80 when that route was 

designated in the 1920's (I-8 roughly follows the route today). Los Angeles 

had adopted a route following in part the tracks of the Southern Pacific 

Railroad from Yuma to San Bernardino by way of the Salton Sea. 

Nevertheless, San Diego advocates claimed their route was a faster way 

to Los Angeles, in part because it cut off 100 miles of desert travel. 

This longstanding dispute would emerge during the organizing convention 

of the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association. According to an account of 

the convention in the January 1912 issue of Touring Topics: 

In the ensuing business session on the day following 

[December 21] the principal matter brought up for settlement 

was the selection of the route which the highway should 

follow through the state of California. The delegates 

representing San Diego and the southern portion of the 

Imperial Valley were insistent that the association should 

endorse a route by way of Yuma to El Centro, thence over 

the Devil's Canyon to San Diego and up the coast to Los 

Angeles, while the northern men united with the Los Angeles 

and upper Imperial Valley delegates in espousing a route 

through the Imperial Valley to Beaumont, Banning and 

thence into Los Angeles. 

During a meeting before the convention, the California delegation had 

unanimously selected the Beaumont-Banning route, which left San Diego 

out, as the favored course. San Diego delegates had declined to attend 

the caucus: 

On the floor of the convention, when the matter of the two 

routes came up, some rather acrimonious debate was 

indulged in, but President Mitchell ruled that the speakers for 

the San Diego delegation were out of order and a resolution 

embodying the Beaumont-Banning route was adopted for 
transmission to the federal authorities as the official action of 

the association. 

According to the adopted resolution, the route recommended to the 

Federal Government ran "westerly from Yuma, along and near the 

Southern Pacific Railway, to a point about 4 and one-half miles west of 

Mammoth station, thence southwesterly to Brawley, thence northwesterly 

along the south and west side of the Salton Sea to Mecca, thence along 

the line of the Southern Pacific tracks to Beaumont, Redlands Junction, 

Colton and thence along the shortest route to Los Angeles." The 

resolution indicated that the route had been selected because the 

association believed the route presented "the fewest geographical and 

physical obstacles," passed "through as much settled territory as possible" 

and was "within striking distance" of a transcontinental railroad. 

An article in the January 13, 1912, issue of Good Roads described the 

western division of the route: 

[It] begins at Raton, N.M., running from there to Las Vegas, 

through Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Carthage, San Antonio, 

Cocorro [Socorro] and Magdalena, N.M., Solomonville, 

Globe, Roosevelt, Phoenix and Yuma, Ariz., and Mammoth, 

Cal., west to Mecca, via Beaumont, through Redlands 

Junction and Colton to Los Angeles. 

That was essentially the route of the Trail to Sunset. 

By April 1912, Touring Traffic could report progress in improving the new 

route: 

Three months ago there was no direct connecting route 

between Los Angeles and Yuma, a city just over the 

Colorado River in Arizona. The automobilist of Los Angeles 

or vicinity who wished to go to Yuma was compelled to travel 

down the coast to San Diego and thence over the difficult 

roads through the lower part of the Imperial Valley and on to 

his destination. Today he can travel over a direct route 

between the two cities and he will find the roads ranging 

from fair to excellent for the entire three hundred and two 

miles. 

Extensive work had been completed: 

[The Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association] has secured a 

fourteen mile right of way between Ontario and Colton that 

provides a direct and excellent route between these two 
cities. It has overcome the extremely difficult and often 

impassable stretch of road at Whitewater Point by 

constructing four miles of new roadway along higher ground 

that provides a good rock foundation and is beyond the 

reach of water even during the rainy season. A new road has 

been built between Mecca and Brawley, a distance of sixtyfour miles, and this highway is in very good condition. The 

road between these two points was formerly a sandy trail 

that, for the most part, could be negotiated only by the higher 

powered cars. Between Brawley and Yuma a fairly good 

road has been provided by way of Mammoth and Ogelby. 

This particular portion of the proposed ocean-to-ocean 

highway presents road engineering problems of some 

difficulty and to provide a first class highway between the 

two points will entail a considerable cost. 

Mitchell and other leaders of the new association began working with 

other associations interested in being part of the route that they hoped the 

Federal Government would build. As Touring Topics put it in April 1912, 

"President Mitchell and Secretary Conwell have not been confined to the 

extreme west but they have been successful in inoculating the Eastern 

states with the virus of their enthusiasm." One of the groups that Mitchell 

worked with was based in Missouri. 

The First National Old Trails Road Convention 

On April 17 and 18, 1912, Professor Williams presided over the National 

Old Trails Road Convention, held in the Commercial Club Rooms in 

Kansas City. The Committee on Credentials certified delegates from Ohio, 

Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Maryland, 

Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and California did not send delegates. 

Mrs. Hunter M. Merriwether, the Missouri State Vice Regent for the D.A.R. 

and a member of the Missouri Good Roads Committee, addressed one of 

the main problems facing the convention, namely routing. No one 

questioned the eastern portion of the new named trail. It would follow the 

Cumberland Road to its terminus in Vandalia, Illinois, continue on to St. 

Louis and Kansas City via the Missouri Cross-State Highway. West of 

Kansas City, however, the best location for the trail was in dispute. 

Citing Shakespeare's claim that "a rose by any other name would smell as 

sweet," Mrs. Merriwether commented: 

In your case, your name is your fortune. The "Old Trails 

Road" tells its own story . . . . The men of Missouri saw the 

need of a State Highway, and the Daughters of the American 
Revolution joined hands with them and helped them to 

decide the proper place to put the road. 

Why not build the National Ocean-to-Ocean Highway along 

the Old Trail's Road as Missouri has built her link? 

Each of the trail States should insist that the Trail Road be 

adopted as their State Highway. 

She emphasized the importance of designating the route along the historic 

trails chosen by the D. A. R. instead of the alternatives under 

consideration. A good road that was not also historic would spoil the 

significance of the name: 

Hold to your name and build that National Old Trail's Road. 

We, Daughters of the American Revolution, do not come 

before you to plead for it, because the section through which 

it passes is a great commercial one, but because it was the 

pathway of our forefathers, who took civilization from the 

tidewaters of the Atlantic to the golden sands of the Pacific . 

. . . 

When we gather our children about our knees, we do not tell 

them of the great captains of industry, of the leaders of 

finance. We tell them of Washington and Lee; of Daniel 

Boone, who led the pioneers along the "Wilderness Road," 

across the Mississippi; of Meriweather [sic] Lewis, and 

William Clark; Whiteman and Spaulding, of the Oregon Trail; 

of Colonel Alexander Doniphan, General Stephen Kearny; of 

Fremont and Thomas H. Benton, the Lion Hearted . . . . 

Men of brain and brawn, fling away personalities in this Old 

Trail's Road building. Root from your hearts the miasma of 

commercialism, which, in its fever and fury, blinds your eyes 

to the upper and higher aim, that of united hearts and hands 

across this great country of ours, to build a National 

Monument that will ever be pointed out as the Old Trail's 

Road, which has been designated as "The Road of Living 

Hearts," over which marched the civilization, opportunity, 

religion, development, and progress of our grand America. 

Routing Disputes: The New and Old Santa Fe Trail 

One of the major routing battles was between rival forces backing the New 

Santa Fe Trail and the Old Santa Fe Trail in Kansas. The New Santa Fe 

Trail was the first named trail in Kansas. Interests in Hutchinson began the 
trail by calling a convention in January 1910 to select a route between 

Newton and the Colorado State line, via Hutchinson, Kinsley, Dodge City, 

Cimarron, Garden City, Hartland, and Syracuse. The 300 delegates who 

attended the convention established a temporary organization, chose the 

name for their route (after rejecting the Valley Speedway), and urged 

eastern Kansas good roads boosters to extend the route to the east. In 

May 1910, a conference in Emporia established the eastern routing. In 

October, Westgard included the New Santa Fe Trail in his Trail to Sunset. 

A competing association formed in November 1911 at Herington. This 

group mapped the Old Santa Fe Trail, as close as possible to the historic 

route, given section line land division and modern development. West of 

Lyons to Santa Fe, the two routes were identical. 

The competition between the two Kansas groups was intense, primarily 

because they were competing for the business that would follow the main 

transcontinental artery. Of course, the D. A. R. interests supported the Old 

Santa Fe Trail, because of its historic importance, for inclusion in the 

National Old Trails Road. 

On April 12, 1912, Ralph Faxon, President of the New Santa Fe Trail 

Association of Kansas, addressed the convention in support of 

designating his line. Just before Faxon spoke, Professor Williams had 

acknowledged the arrival of Chester Lawrence. He was on a pathfinding 

transcontinental trip from New York to Los Angeles under the sponsorship 

of the William Randolph Hearst newspaper organization and the Oceanto-Ocean Highway Association: 

THE CHAIRMAN: I want to step aside from the regular 

program just at this moment to introduce to you the first man 

who will follow the National Old Trails Road entirely across 

the continent, Mr. Chester Lawrence. (Applause). 

MR. LAWRENCE: We have been a long time coming, 

gentlemen, but we are here. 

THE CHAIRMAN: He will say something to us a little later, 

because just at present he has come up out of tribulation-I 

mean Kansas. He has to catch his breath. (Laughter). 

Faxon picked up on the theme at the start of his speech: 

A little while ago . . . my friend, the president of this 

conference, suggested that Mr. Lawrence had recently come 

down out of tribulation, meaning Kansas, and the thought 

occurred to me, and I think my Kansas friends will agree with 
me perfectly, that possibly he did come out of tribulation, but 

he didn't help matters much by coming into "misery," 

(Laughter and applause). 

After discussing the good roads movement in Kansas, he turned to his 

main concern: 

I pause for a moment to pay my respects to these Daughters 

of the American Revolution-and many who are not here I 

know will join me-in paying respect to them for the work they 

have done. But I say, stripping it of its sentiment, there must 

be organization and practical construction. There must be 

practical work and must be men's work along with it. 

He said that his association was a pioneer of the good roads movement in 

Kansas and listed some of the men who helped create the New Santa Fe 

Trail: 

It is men like that who have done the road work in 

connection with the New Santa Fe Trail; and when anybody 

tells you that mere sentiment should govern more than 

honest, sincere efforts of a band of men covering a period of 

years and extending as it has back into a time in the past 

that makes it the pioneer of all the roads of the West, then I 

want to tell you it is time to pause and think a minute, and to 

pay tribute to the men who have gone to the front and done 

the actual work that has been done by the New Santa Fe 

Trail and by its organization. Mr. Williams knows it. Mr. Wilby 

knows it. Mr. Westgard knows it. The American Automobile 

Association knows it and Chester Lawrence knows it; the 

office of public roads of the United States, Department of 

Agriculture knows it . . . . 

Faxon concluded, "I thank my stars that it has been recognized from the 

government down to the humblest traveler as one of the most significant 

things in Good Roads in all the West." 

Now, George P. Morehouse, speaking on behalf of the Old Santa Fe Trail 

Association, referred to Lawrence: 

Those two organizations [the New and Old Santa Fe Trails] 

should receive encouragement. But when you hold a 

national Old Trails convention to induce the United States 

Government and other interests to improve a great ocean-toocean highway across this country along this historic line, it 

is no wonder that the action of your convention was so 
unanimous in selecting by resolution, the route of the Old 

Santa Fe Trail . . . rather than the new trail (applause)-rather 

than that new Santa Fe Trail of modern times which my 

friend Faxon represents and which this distinguished 

automobilist has partially come over, and would have been 

here many hours before if he had only taken the old natural 

route. The trouble with Mr. Lawrence has been that he did 

not follow that old natural route that kept away from the 

boggy, the sandy and the gumbo bottoms of the cottonwood 

and other regions he has been obliged to come through. 

(Applause.) 

. . . But when it is stated here that the Old Santa Fe Trail is 

simply a sentiment, I take issue with that; and, looking along 

its historic value, I want to say something in regard to why 

sentiment is even stronger often than commerce. Sentiment 

is the reason that the Daughters of the American Revolution 

. . . have always worked to have the national highway follow 

along the Old Trails line. Sentiment is the reason that the 

national organization of the D.A.R. in Washington yesterday 

has sanctioned and asked that the Old Trails line should be 

used. (Great applause.) Sentiment has accomplished more 

in this country, often even drenching our country in blood 

rather than to cut it up, when possibly a little commercial 

finesse would have prevented it. And sentiment is what will 

ultimately get the United States Government to make vast 

appropriations for roads from one end of our country to the 

other, more than even the strength and political sagacity of 

commercial centers. (Applause.) 

That afternoon, during debate on the association's constitution, Faxon 

tried to convince the convention to postpone adoption of the "Old" line. 

Noting that the adopted resolution only "recommends" the Old Santa Fe 

Trail "as nearly as practicable," he said: 

I should be absolutely failing in the decency and respect that 

we all owe to an organization that has promoted more than 

one good thing, if I did not preface the few words I am going 

to say with a tribute which comes from my heart towards the 

Daughters of the American Revolution. 

[But] I stand on those words, "as near as practicable," and 

Mr. Miller [J. M. Miller, representing the Old Santa Fe Trail 

Association] ought to stand on them, and the rest of my good 

friends ought to stand on them; and then we can take this 

thing home where it belongs and fight it out and settle it for 
all time, and the winner will have the support of the 

vanquished and we shall all be together in this movement. 

Faxon also complained that the resolution endorsing the Old Santa Fe 

Trail had not been properly introduced to the convention by the Committee 

on Resolutions. 

. . . why try to run anything over us which did not come 

through the channel of the Committee on Resolutions in the 

ordinary and orderly manner? 

Mr. Miller replied: 

For what purpose are we here? We are here for the purpose 

of determining the national highway that shall connect the 

two oceans, if we have any purpose at all; and my friend 

Faxon knows it as well as anybody on earth, and he knows 

that the only thing we can do is to appeal to the people herenot to run the bandwagon over them. There is no disposition 

in this magnificent audience to run the bandwagon over 

anybody, but above and beyond any other organization on 

earth, this organization will never run the bandwagon over 

the Daughters of the American Revolution, after their grand 

work in this cause. (Applause and cheers). Daughters of the 

American Revolution, I cannot give you my heart. It is not 

mine to give. I would first have to interview the lovely little 

woman out at Council Grove; but you have my voice and my 

hand in every good work and my help in the good work you 

are undertaking. You may accept the hearts of these 

gentlemen who belong to the New Santa Fe Trail, if you will, 

and their wishes in your good work; but it will not help you 

very much, in my judgment, unless you have their 

determined effort to carry out what you want done. 

When the issue was resolved in favor of the Old Santa Fe Trail, Professor 

Williams joked: 

I wish to call attention to the meeting tonight before I get 

further on, so I will not forget it. I understand that Mr. C. R. 

McLain of Kansas City will present an illustrated lecture at 

the New Casino--and I hope those of us now who favor the 

"Old" will not stay away because it is the "New" Casino, if 

that is the name of it--on road building. 
Routing Disputes: The Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

The other main controversy over routing concerned the Southwest, where 

few good roads existed. Colonel Dell M. Potter, of Clifton, Arizona, 

addressed the convention on the second day. (He noted that his title of 

"Colonel" resulted from his having been paymaster of the State's National 

Guard.) Potter explained how the organization he represented, the Oceanto-Ocean Highway Association of Redlands, California, came about: 

Four years ago I went to the Chamber of Commerce in Los 

Angeles and asked if they would not assist us in boosting the 

National Highway from the Pacific to the Atlantic . . . . And 

what has the state of California done? It has bonded itself for 

eighteen million dollars for the purpose of building what? 

Building automobile roads--not transcontinental roads, not 

roads for the benefit of you and me, but roads that will 

benefit California and allow or permit California to have 

[automobiles] shipped by train from across the United States 

to its eastern line and tour through from there. We want to 

take some of this [touring] money from them before they get 

to California. I want to tell you if you get to California and 

ever get away with a cent you do more than the Potter tribe 

ever has. (Laughter) . . . . 

After four years of hard fighting in Arizona, we believed that 

we could settle our difficulties as to where our part of the 

National Highway should cross the state, and . . . at a 

meeting called on the 20th of last December, at which 

twenty-eight delegates from the State of California and 

twenty-eight from New Mexico and twenty-eight from Arizona 

met together for the purpose of organizing some kind of a 

transcontinental or national highway. We found, to our 

sorrow, that the fight had been making us only trouble. We 

found more Arizonians there interested in taking that road 

across the northern part of the state than we knew there was 

in Arizona. They all believed they were entitled to have it, but 

we finally eliminated and finally settled our difficulties. We 

settled our difficulties in the state of California, and so did the 

state of New Mexico; and so far as the National Highway 

across the state of Arizona and the southern part of 

California and the state of New Mexico is concerned, that is 

absolutely settled. We have no more fight. But I can tell you 

the Lord could be proud of some of the fighters they have 

got in the northern part of the state, and the devil could 

afford to give half his kingdom for some of those fighters up 

there . . . . 
I want to say that four years ago we advocated the building 

of this transcontinental highway following the Santa Fe Trail, 

and we have fought this thing out up to the 20th of last 

December, and then agreed that this should be the line of 

road from ocean to ocean, and the first one built by the 

United States government. We say that we are in a position 

to show you people from Missouri, those that have that 

[transcontinental] disease, and we must show you and we 

are ready to show you. We are not babies in this particular, if 

we are the "Baby State" in the Union. We began this thing, 

and we have been fighting for Colorado and Kansas and 

Missouri and Illinois and Indiana and Ohio and New York 

and New Jersey and Pennsylvania to have them put on the 

map, long before this association was formed. We are not 

asking for any credit for that, but we saw the writing on the 

wall and said, "We have got to get busy and have got to bind 

these various states together." 

Colonel Potter also explained how the association was named: 

I want to say, with reference to the name of that association, 

it was finally suggested as the Southwestern 

Transcontinental Highway Association. I said, "Not in a 

thousand years. We will make it something broader than 

that. It must be either the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Association or the Transcontinental Highway Association." 

You could not inject into that organization or any other such 

organization as that anything as narrow as any particular 

section of the country. We finally agreed that the name of the 

association should be the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Association. 

According to the proceedings of the National Old Trails Road convention, 

no one argued against Potter's position. 

The convention adopted a route along the 

Cumberland Road, the Cross-State Highway 

through Missouri, the "Old Santa Fe Trail" to 

Santa Fe and "from Santa Fe west on the 

most historic and scenic route to the Pacific 

Coast." Possibly, debate within the 

Committee on Constitution and By-laws, not 

reported in the proceedings, blocked 

adoption of the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway's 

route through New Mexico, Arizona, and California during the first 

US map showing proposed

location of National Old 

Trails Road
convention. The Oregon Trail branch, as shown on Miss Gentry's map, 

was not included; to judge from the proceedings, this branch was never 

seriously considered part of the route. 

On another matter, Colonel Potter offered a suggestion: 

Mr. Chairman, I move you that it is the sense of this 

Association, born today, that we affiliate with the Ocean-toOcean Highway Association, with one and the same purpose 

in view; that we affiliate with them and work with them first, 

last and all the time to the end that this one first 

transcontinental highway from ocean to ocean be completed. 

The motion was carried. In addition, the convention resolved: 

That the thanks of this convention is extended to the 

Daughters of the American Revolution, who, by their energy 

and patriotism, have so permanently marked the "Old Santa 

Fe Trail" by lasting monuments in several States, and that 

the route of this historic old highway will be forever 

preserved to posterity. 

Judge J. M. Lowe 

As the convention neared its end, the Committee 

on Permanent Organization proposed to designate 

Dr. Williams as President of the new association. 

He declined: 

While I appreciate more than I can express 

the courtesy shown me in this Convention, 

and the action, particularly contrary to my 

express wishes and desires, of my friends 

on the Committee on Permanent 

Organization, there are reasons that I have 

confided to some of my more closely 

affiliated friends which make it utterly 

impossible for me to accept at your hands this signal mark of 

your confidence in me. If I will not be accused of plagiarism I 

would say with all the emphasis that I can, that under no 

circumstances could I accept what you apparently are 

inclined to offer me, the leadership of a movement that is 

epoch-making, history-making, in its character. 

He suggested an alternative: 

Judge J. M. Lowe
If it is left to me to make a nomination in my stead, it would 

afford me great pleasure to nominate for the presidency of 

this Association a resident of this city, a man of the highest 

character, a man influential at the national capital, a man 

who has served the Missouri Old Trails Association as 

executive committeeman, a lawyer and statesman whose 

heart is in this work and who is as thoroughly committed to it 

as any other man, and who here at this central city, which 

bears the name of one state and belongs to the other should 

be located, it seems to me, the president of this association. 

And I present, in withdrawing my name, thus trespassing 

upon your courtesy, which I am sure is more than I ought to 

do, I am withdrawing my name regretfully and appreciatively, 

in your interest as well as in Mrs. Williams' and my own, if 

you will allow me to take you into my confidence to that 

extent, I present to you the name of Judge J. M. Lowe of 

Kansas City. (Cries of "Good!" and applause.) 

The convention elected Judge J. M. Lowe, always referred to by his 

initials, to be President. 

Joseph Macauley Lowe was born in Pendleton County, Kentucky, in 1844. 

When he was old enough, he joined the Confederate Army and served for 

several months near the end of the Civil War. He taught school in 

Greenfield, Indiana, while studying law. He moved to Plattsburg, Missouri, 

where he practiced law for 15 years, and served as prosecuting attorney 

of Clinton County for four successive terms. 

In Plattsburg, he married Mary Elizabeth McWilliams in 1874. They had 

two children, a daughter, Mrs. Hughes Bryant of Kansas City, and a son, 

Mr. J. Robert Lowe of Lees Summit. The couple moved to Kansas City in 

1882. Although primarily focused on private activities, he occupied several 

appointive offices and served as Judge of the County Court of Jackson 

County. He also served as election commissioner in Kansas City for 6 

years, during which time he gained a reputation for fighting dishonesty in 

politics and at elections, regardless of party. 

He had been a fighter for good roads for many years. In an 1897 address 

to the Southwestern Commercial Congress in Atlanta, Georgia, he spoke 

about a subject "which has enlisted the thought and energies of the 

greatest intellects throughout civilization," namely good roads. He 

discussed and quoted the great leaders who had supported the 

development of roads, especially the Cumberland Road, in the United 

States. He said, "Let us no longer quibble over hair-splitting theories of 

governmental power. Either the General Government has authority to 

appropriate national revenues to road building, or it has not." He was in no 
doubt of the answer, namely "that the thing can and shall be done." He 

explained: 

Let us begin where we left off when the "bogy man" of 

doubtful authority made his appearance, take up the old 

Cumberland road, or any other road, carry it forward and 

intersect the Santa Fe trail and stretch one great national 

highway across the continent. When this is done, "the way" 

discovered will seem so simple and so easy that we will only 

marvel at our sloth and go forward in the only rational, 

feasible, equitable way of road building. 

He suggested that, "We must cease regarding road building as a tax, and 

look upon it as an investment." The Congress had appropriated $300 

million for post office buildings. "the necessity for which did not exist," 

money that could have built "ten great macadam roads from ocean to 

ocean, and ten from the Lakes to the Gulf." But when good roads 

advocates asked for a percentage of that amount, "a mere bagatelle," 

advocates of States rights cry out, "Paternalism." 

Be it so; but we shall not halt. We fear this charge even less 

than we did the equally foolish cry of "unconstitutionality." 

We are beginning to know our rights, and knowing them we 

dare maintain them. This question has figured largely in the 

election of two Presidents, and it may be of equal potency in 

the election of a third. This is our money ; and we shall not 

stop until a portion of it is appropriated to the development 

and enrichment of the country, furnishing employment to 

thousands of idle hands, and adding millions in value to the 

wealth and prosperity of the country. 

By 1910, Judge Lowe was absorbed in the cause of good roads. 

Addressing the National Good Roads Convention in Oklahoma City on 

October 5, 1910, he had begun, "The amount of energy employed on the 

subject of good roads is out of proportion to the results obtained." After 

summarizing the history of the Cumberland Road, he addressed a more 

recent objection to Federal funding for road building: 

But it may be said this would be to open wide the "pork 

barrel"-every congressional district would want a road. It may 

be replied that, as it is now most congressional districts have 

a creek or bayou which needs dredging, riprapping, or 

"snagging," and if road building was added, it would give the 

average Congressman something to do, and he could 

always report to his constituents how earnestly he had tried 

and what he could do next time. 
After listing over $441 million in appropriations by Congress over 20 years 

for rivers and harbors and quoting the good roads planks adopting by the 

Republican and Democratic conventions before the 1908 presidential 

election, he restated his argument from the 1897 speech, but with a few 

modifications: 

Both parties having decided "that the thing can and shall be 

done," it only remains to search and "find the way." This is 

easy. Begin where we left off when the "bogy man" of 

doubtful authority made his appearance, take up the old 

Cumberland Road, carry it forward and intersect the Santa 

Fe trail and the Oregon trail, and stretch one great national 

highway across the continent. 

He concluded: 

What I do insist upon is, that if the policy of internal 

improvements, which has become the settled policy of the 

Government, is to continue, then the highways of the country 

shall share in that system as constituting a vital part thereof, 

and as such entitled to a square deal. As public highways 

they constitute a vital place in transportation, and, belonging 

to the public, they should be constructed and maintained by 

the public. 

Judge Lowe had also proposed a $50 million highway system for Missourian astounding sum for the times. He also claimed credit for being the first 

person in the United States to propose the use of motor vehicle license 

fees to support highway construction. 

In all his public endeavors, Judge Lowe exhibited what one account 

described as "militant honesty, unselfishness, vision, faith." He was "a foe 

of inefficiency and lax methods of administration in public office." 

After the delegates approved the appointment of Judge Lowe as 

President, Professor Williams was elected to the specially created post of 

Advisory Vice President. The name of the organization, which filed for 

incorporation in the Circuit Court at Kansas City, was the National Old 

Trails Road Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association. 

With the convention nearly over, Professor Williams called for an 

acceptance speech by Judge Lowe: 

Now the chairman is going to ask--let him be just this 

moment longer the chairman--in order to cement the tie that 

binds, in the closing hours of the Convention, after again 
thanking you for your courtesies to him, that the new 

president of the National Old Trails Association be escorted 

to the chair and is going to appoint as a committee to escort 

Judge Lowe to the chair, Mr. Miller of Kansas and Mr. Faxon 

of Kansas. (Cries of "Good!" and applause.) 

Professor Williams continued: 

I present to you gentlemen with my love and thanks, and my 

congratulations on your new president, with my best wishes 

for his success, and for your own personal welfare and 

prosperity, your new president, my friend and yours, a 

lawyer, a Good Roads promoter, a man whose interest is 

thoroughly in behalf of the building of this transcontinental 

highway on the National Old Trails road, Judge J. M. Lowe 

of Kansas City. 

In accepting the Presidency, Judge Lowe began: 

I don't know what I ought to say. Of course it is always 

expected that the recipient of such an honor as you have 

bestowed upon me, shall return his thanks. As I said to a 

friend of mine a moment ago, when congratulating me, that it 

did not impress me that it was congratulations I stood most 

in need of at this particular hour. 

He spoke of the "calamity" of losing Professor Williams' leadership, "but he 

has presented his reasons in such a way that they made it impossible for 

us to press it upon him further." 

Judge Lowe then discussed his views on highway development: 

Now, personally, just one word, because a great deal, I 

suspect, remains to be done, as most all of you know without 

my telling you, that in selecting me, you have selected a 

president who is in favor of good roads. (Applause.) I have 

reached a point where, perhaps, I have not quite as much 

patience as I ought to have with men who talk like we ought 

to go to Congress and, upon bended knee-or, as 

Shakespeare expresses it, "Crook the pregnant hinges of the 

knee, where thrift may follow fawning"-and talk about the 

government extending national aid to road building as 

something to be petitioned for and begged for. I have gotten 

way beyond that. I know, and you know, that the national 

revenues belong to the people. I know, as you know, that 

these revenues are subject to the action of Congress. I 
know, and you know, they have been appropriated to all 

sorts of uses and purposes. Now, this is our money, just as 

the states' funds are. These representatives in Congress are 

our servants, or should be, and when we go before them we 

will demand that this money be appropriated for this 

purpose. (Applause) . . . . 

While we have been meeting in this convention and passing 

these resolutions, we have already had introduced in the 

Congress a bill appropriating out of the general revenues of 

the government moneys sufficient to meet one-half the 

expense of building the National Old Trails Road across this 

country. That bill was referred to the Committee on 

Agriculture, and on yesterday twenty-four states, 

represented by the Daughters of the American Revolution, 

were before that Committee, pressing upon the committee 

its duty with reference to that bill. I have a copy of that bill in 

my pocket. I have only one. If I had more time I would read it 

to you. It may not be the wisest or may not be the best; but 

the point I want to get before you is this, that the National 

Old Trails Road is the first on record in the Congress of the 

United States demanding a national system of highways. 

Now, then, let's see to it that it remains the first. 

Of course I am, and I expect you are, in favor of all the bills 

introduced, about thirty-eight in number. Personally I am in 

favor of the Underwood bill, and I am in favor of the Cullom 

bill, and am in fact in favor of all of them and any of them. As 

to how much Congress should appropriate, this is a detail we 

will work out when we come to it-whether the Government 

should assume the entire expense of building it, as I believe 

it should, or whether the Government should simply aid the 

states in building it, I don't care a rap about that. I will do 

business with them on either proposition or in either way. 

Now gentlemen, this is more than I intended to say to you. I 

repeat, as I began, that it is absolutely a calamity to this 

organization that Colonel Williams should be permitted to 

retire from its presidency. I cannot hope to fill his place--no 

man can fill his place, in the chair. In the language of 

Jefferson, when he succeeded [Benjamin] Franklin as 

minister to Paris, when being congratulated by one who said, 

"I understand you are to take the place of Dr. Franklin," 

replied, "No, sir! I can't take the place of Dr. Franklin. No 

other man can. I succeed Dr. Franklin." That is true at the 

present time. I cannot fill Col. Williams' place-- no man can. I 

can only succeed him. 
The convention also adopted Better Roads as its 

official organ. Its editor, Jesse Taylor, addressed 

the members near the end of the session. 

Although he pointed out that he was not an 

engineer, he had a word of warning. He stressed, 

he was not against the automobile ("I don't own 

one, but I have nothing against the other fellow") 

and he didn't care whether the route was the Old 

or New Santa Fe Trail (the Chairman admonished 

him, "Don't use that phrase again. That is 

settled."). He explained that hundreds and 

thousands of people would be heading to the San 

Francisco Exposition in 1915 in $590 Fords all the 

way up to $6,000 vehicles weighing 3 or 4 tons: 

You are going home and ask the people of your localities to 

put up money to build roads. You are going to advertise this 

great National, ocean-to-ocean highway, and invite the four 

hundred thousand automobilists from one end of this nation 

to the other, and the people who own mules and horses, to 

come and travel on that road. Now, we are warning you, 

when you build it, build it right. Wake up now!

He mentioned earth, gravel without proper drainage, and waterbound 

macadam. He wasn't advocating any specific surface: 

But I want to warn you now, when you go home and start 

this sentiment for building a road, take along with it the 

sentiment for the proper construction of roads, and build 

them right. Because, if you don't, when the automobiles 

going to the great celebration of the opening of the Panama 

Canal in San Francisco have run thirty days over the thing, 

they will have the whole State of Kansas cursing you 

because you have wasted their money in improper 

construction. You will have the whole of any state through 

which it may pass cursing you because you wasted their 

money in improper construction. 

He urged them to study proper construction methods, as well as proper 

upkeep. To applause, he cited the French system of road patrols: 

What I want to admonish you to do in these few moments is 

to build your roads right, and I want to warn you against 

improper construction and a rebuke from the people which 

will come to you if you build this Old Trail in a careless way. 

Jesse Taylor
Professor Williams, still acting as Chairman, ended the convention with 

these closing words: 

I wish to express to you again and finally my personal 

appreciation of your kindness to the Chairman for your 

courtesy to him personally, and to say that in this wonderful 

convention, with more than five hundred delegates 

representing eight states of the American Union, we have 

launched a movement that, in my opinion, will establish the 

first transcontinental wagon road on the Old Trails Route 

across the continent. 

Miss Gentry's Testimony 

Miss Gentry had not been able to attend the convention. She and other 

members of the D. A. R. were in Washington, D.C., to testify before the 

Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives on April 19. 

The committee was considering H. R. 17919, Representative Borland's bill 

calling for Federal construction of the National Old Trails Road. 

Before introducing Miss Gentry at the hearing, Representative Borland 

read a telegram to her from the convention delegates in Kansas City: 

Old Trails Road convention assembled, 500 strong, in 

Kansas City; acknowledge greetings of the Daughters of the 

American Revolution Old Trails Road committee in session 

in Washington, and again acknowledge our obligation to you 

for having been first in promoting what we believe and hope 

will shortly become the first great transcontinental highway 

over the historic and scenic route along the old trails of the 

pioneers. Walter Williams, Chairman. 

Representative Borland then introduced Miss Gentry, " the lady who, I 

believe, is the originator of this idea . . . ." In reprinting her testimony, 

Better Roads (August 1912) referred to Miss Gentry as "Chairman Old 

Trails Road Committee, National Society, D.A.R." 

Miss Gentry's comments emphasized the difference between seeking 

good roads for commercial interests and seeking them as a memorial to 

the men and women who traveled our historic trails: 

A countrywoman said to me: "My men folks have left me 

stuck in the mud all my life. I am mighty thankful the D.A.R. 

are trying to pull me out." While individually we are 

concerned with this phase of good roads, as an organization 

we are dedicated to the historic and patriotic side, and are 
here to urge that a great National ocean-to-ocean highway 

be built as a memorial to the pioneer patriots of the Nation. 

Miss Gentry explained the original conception of a highway along the 

Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, as well as along General Kearny's trail to 

California during the Mexican War. She added that the plan included an 

extension through Baltimore, Philadelphia, and into New York along the 

roads George Washington traveled on his inaugurals as President of the 

United States. 

She contrasted the D.A.R. project with other proposed highway projects: 

There are many projected roads at present; the Meridian 

Road, proposed to run from the Gulf to Canada, bisects our 

road at Kearney, Nebraska, and also at McPherson, Kansas; 

another road is the capital-to-capital, or the Quebec-Miami 

Road, which intersects our road at Washington, D.C. The 

Natchez Trace is a feeder into our road, as is also the 

Chicago to St. Louis Road, to be called the "Lincoln 

Highway"; the river-to-river road across Iowa connects 

Chicago with our road again at Council Bluffs. All of these 

and many other roads will eventually be built for commercial 

advantage; for educational, historic, and patriotic motives, 

we urge that a distinctive scenic highway should be 

dedicated, built, and maintained by the National Government 

. . . . I want to say very frankly to you that my interest and the 

interest of the Daughters of the American Revolution in the 

National highway is purely historic; purely sentimental and 

patriotic . . . . [O]ur interest is not a vague sentiment, but an 

insatiable passion . . . . 

Let the D. A. R., who conceived and initiated this movement, 

bind with homespun cords the realized past to the ideal 

future of the Nation . . . . 

Near her conclusion, Miss Gentry explained the nickname of the project: 

In Samoa the natives have built a memorial road to [novelist 

and traveler] Robert Louis Stevenson, which they call "The 

Road of Loving Hearts." Our plan also is to make a road of 

loving hearts; and it will have not only that interest, but it will 

have commercial and economic value. 

Congress did not approve Borland's bill or any other bills supporting 

specific highway proposals. However, the Post Office Appropriations Act 

for fiscal year 1913, enacted on August 24, 1912, authorized the 
Department of Agriculture and the Post Office Department to conduct an 

experimental program for construction of post roads. The act also 

established a Joint Congressional Committee on Federal Aid in the 

Construction of Post Roads to study the Federal-aid question and report to 

Congress on it. It would be headed by Senator Jonathan Bourne, Jr., of 

Oregon. 

On The Road 

On May 15, 1912, Colonel Potter left Los Angeles for a trip to New York in 

a car provided by The Los Angeles Times. According to an article in the 

September 1912 issue of Better Roads, he was accompanied in the "Los 

Angeles Times Special" by correspondent Bert C. Smith and a chauffeur, 

John Zak. 

In Kansas City, Judge Lowe joined them for the trip to Wheeling, West 

Virginia: 

Public meetings were held all along the route, branches of 

the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association and National Old 

Trails Road Association were organized at many places, and 

much interest was aroused that will make sentiment for the 

early improvement of the Old National Road and the Santa 

Fe Trail. "This country ought to have an ocean-to-ocean road 

which is in condition at all seasons of the year," said Judge 

J. M. Lowe. "The route we propose is the only one which will 

make this possible." 

He described the route, including the western end along the "old Sunset 

Trail" to Los Angeles, the route adopted by the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Association. 

During an address in Cambridge, Ohio, on July 6, 1912, Judge Lowe 

focused on the authority of the Federal Government to appropriate funds 

for national highways. As he would on many occasions, he went back to 

the Constitution, which delegated specific powers "to establish post-offices 

and post roads" to the Federal Government. While the modern Congress, 

he said, may have forgotten that the phrase "to establish" meant "to build," 

there was no doubt in the Congress in the days when it included men such 

as James Madison, one of the Founding Fathers. Judge Lowe cited the 

history of the National Road, initiated under a law signed by President 

Thomas Jefferson in 1806. Bills for its construction and maintenance were 

approved by later Presidents even though "this exercise of power was not 

without opposition." He explained: 
So jealous were the people of what they considered the 

rights of the States, and so fearful were they of the 

encroachment of Congress, strange as it may seem, the 

great and logical expounder of the Constitution, the greatest 

stickler for strict construction then living, or who has since 

lived, John C. Calhoun, stood shoulder to shoulder with 

Henry Clay in defense of the exercise of this power. 

To those who argued that the Federal Government does not have the 

authority to finance road building, he cited Federal land grants for 

railroads, and appropriated funds to improve rivers and harbors or build 

the Roosevelt Dam or the Panama Canal. Where, he asked, is the 

constitutional authority for those expenditures? "A spectacular 

performance was pulled off recently of sending the navy around the world, 

which formed no useful public purpose and cost $14,000,000." This 

funding could have been used for the National Old Trails Road, which 

"experts" said would cost only $12 million. He cited the appropriation of 

$200 million a year for pensions, "and the only defense for this vast 

expenditure made by the politicians is that it puts the money back into 

circulation. So would the building of roads, and at the same time give 

employment to labor and add millions in value to the wealth of the 

country." 

The cooperation of the two organizations was cited on June 5, when John 

Mitchell, President of the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association, delivered 

a speech in Library Park, California. He referred to the December 1911 

Tri-State Road Convention held in Phoenix at the request of the 

Governors of Arizona, California, and New Mexico: 

[W]e are going to work with the people east of the Colorado 

River, for while our organization, originally formed in 

December last, consisted only of California, Arizona, and 

New Mexico, our cause has so interested and pleased the 

people of the other States that we now have linked to our 

chain the States of Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, 

Indiana, and Ohio. And if you doubt the earnestness and 

enthusiasm of the people of those States, you should read of 

the proceedings at the Kansas City convention wherein that 

proud old organization, the Santa Fe Old Trails Road 

Association generously changed its name as suggested by 

our delegate, Mr. Dell M. Potter, so that today that 

organization which is building and improving roads from St. 

Louis, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, is now known as 

the National Old Roads Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Association. 
American Road Congress, 1912 

Judge Lowe and Mrs. Donald McLean, Honorary President-General of the 

D.A.R., were scheduled to address a road congress sponsored by the 

American Association for Highway Improvement in the Greek Temple on 

the Million Dollar Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey (September 30-October 

5, 1912). Logan Page had formed the association in 1910 as an umbrella 

organization for all elements of the Good Roads Movement to consider a 

broad range of issues, in contrast to the AAA and American Road Builders 

Association, which reflected their backing interests primarily by trying to 

influence legislation. In 1912, the association changed its name to the 

American Highway Association. 

Although Judge Lowe was unable to attend, his speech was read to the 

delegates. He described the history of the links in the Old Trails Road and 

the trail association's motto: "The biggest thing ever conceived. The 

easiest thing to do." He added: 

The Daughters of the American Revolution, inspired by the 

splendid labor and achievements of those early patriots, 

have led the way in this great work, and are cheering us on 

to a full fruition of our hopes and our labors. We shall not fail. 

I look with enraptured vision to the time, not distant, when 

this great highway, beginning at tidewater on the Atlantic, 

shall be rebuilt across the continent, to end only in the 

golden sands of the Pacific, lighted throughout by a streak of 

electricity, and dedicated once more to the descendants of 

the heroes and heroines who baptized it in the blood and 

tears of a nation's birth. 

Mrs. McLean followed his presentation with a speech that Good Roads

summarized in its issue of November 2, 1912: 

[She] said she had always been interested in old trails and 

that although she was quite willing to leave the securing of 

the money for road improvement to men, she, and the 

organization which she represented, wanted the expenditure 

directed rightly. She told of the work done by the women of 

Missouri in marking old trails in that state and urged that in 

the construction of roads the consideration of sentiment and 

patriotism be not overlooked. 

Colonel Potter was present for a session on "How to Encourage the 'See 

America First' Idea." The session began with a speech by Preston Belvin, 

president of the Virginia State Automobile Association, on the history of 

road building, historic roads, and scenic beauties of Virginia. North 
Carolina's Dr. Joseph Hyde Pratt, president of the Southern Appalachian 

Good Roads Association, addressed the general topic of "See America 

First." He explained that the wonders of Europe could be reached by firstclass highways, resulting in large amounts of American tourist dollars 

leaving American shores. If America built comparable highways, he said, 

those dollars would stay in America, and no area would benefit more than 

the Southern Appalachian region. He discussed the "Crest of the Blue 

Ridge Highway" that was being planned as a scenic road rather than a 

commercial road. 

Potter spoke on the advantages of the transcontinental road being 

planned by the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association from New York to 

Los Angeles. It should, he felt, be built by the Federal Government, and it 

should be built first. Such roads were essential to the economy. He 

thought three transcontinental roads and three north-south roads were 

what was needed. He closed by saying that if America did not have good 

roads, American money would continue going to Europe, which would use 

the revenue to maintain its roads. 

The session concluded with a presentation by Captain H. Z. Osborne, 

Secretary of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, who discussed Los 

Angeles County's efforts to improve its roads, and Frank D. Lyon, 

Secretary of the New York State Automobile Association, who described 

the State's color marking scheme for certain main roads. He also 

expressed support for the Federal-aid concept. 

Buffalo Bill 

William F. "Buffalo 

Bill" Cody had 

been a member of 

the Advisory 

Committee to the 

Missouri Good 

Roads Committee, 

but in October 

1912 he took 

another step in 

support of the 

cause. Miss Gentry 

announced that 

Buffalo Bill had 

donated a stagecoach to the Old Trails Road Committee of the D.A.R. 

According to an account by Miss Gentry in the February 1913 issue of 

Better Roads, the gift came about by accident: 

Stagecoach donated to Old Trails Road Committee

of the D.A.R. by Buffalo Bill Cody
Col. Cody was visiting his old friend, Col. Daniel B. Dyer, 

whose southern mansion down on the Independence road is 

locally famous. Col. Dyer's niece, Miss Green, invited a 

number of guests to meet Col. Cody. 

We sat on the wide gallery under the August moon and 

listened to Col. Cody tell thrilling tales of his life on the 

plains. Col. Cody is a raconteur of brilliant ability and we sat 

fascinated for hours. His last story was of the first exhibition 

of his Wild West Show in London, when the Prince of Wales 

(afterwards King Edward) and four European monarchs, 

then on a visit to the court of St. James, commanded a ride 

in the Deadwood Coach, with Col. Cody as the driver[. T]he 

Prince introduced "Buffalo Bill" to his guests, put them inside 

the coach and as he took his seat on the box remarked, 

"You probably have never held four kings before." Col. Cody 

with the same nonchalance that made him famous as 

Government scout, and pony express rider and plainsman, 

drawled back, "Better than that, I held four kings and the 

joker." 

This repartee amused the prince and he thereupon booked 

passage for the next afternoon's performance, for the 

Princess of Wales and the royal children. "Buffalo Bill" 

became lionized; his Deadwood coach, and Wild West Show 

became the fashion; requests poured in from the English 

fashionables for rides round the show ring, with the Indian 

attack and company rescue and all the thrillers thrown in. 

Col. Cody rested on his laurels and would not drive for any 

one under royalty. Passage was booked up for every night of 

the show's long run, but the regular stage-driver sat on the 

box. 

Col. Cody finished his tale by inviting Miss Green and me to 

ride in the Deadwood Coach at the following afternoon 

performance. We laughingly accepted with the provision that 

he present the coach to the D.A.R. Old Trails Road 

Committee. 

Col. Cody took the banter seriously and said he would 

present the committee with a Deadwood coach, but the 

Deadwood coach was promised to the Smithsonian Institute. 

Through the courtesy of the Burlington Railroad and the 

interest of its officers in the Oregon Trail, which is part of the 

Old Trails Road, the coach was transported from Cody, 
Wyoming, to Kansas City, where it is on public exhibition at 

the Swope Park Zoo. 

Cody wrote to Miss Gentry on October 26, 1912, to inform her of the 

history of the stage coach. 

I think the one you have was built by the Abbott Downing 

Company at Concord, New Hampshire, in 1863, was 

shipped around the Horn to California and was used on the 

California stage lines; finally worked its way East on the Ben 

Holliday overland stage line to Old Fort Laramie; then used 

by Cheyenne and Deadwood Black Hills line. 

He added, "It has been baptized in blood many times." 

Miss Gentry concluded her account with a comment about the Old Trails 

Road: 

Red, white, and blue bands on the telegraph poles mark the 

"D.A.R. road" across Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. Soon, 

tourists will be able to "Follow the Flag" across the continent. 

A D.A.R. motor-party will rendezvous at Westport, Missouri, 

in 1915, and form a motor caravan to journey to the 

Panama-Pacific Exposition where they hope to dedicate the 

Old Trails Road as the National Highway. 

Location of the National Old Trails Road Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, 

December 1912 

On December 12, 1912, Judge Lowe addressed the Indiana State Better 

Roads Convention. By then, the National Old Trails Road Ocean-to-Ocean 

Highway Association had settled, tentatively, on its route in the Southwest. 

The association, based in 222 Midland Building in Kansas City, published 

the speech as a brochure in support of the construction and maintenance 

of the highway by the Federal Government. 

At the time, the National Old Trails Road included six historic trails. The 

first was Braddock's Road in Maryland. In 1755, during the French and 

Indian War, Major General Edward Braddock led British and Colonial 

troops, including Colonel George Washington, from Alexandria, Virginia, to 

take Fort Duquesne (at the future site of Pittsburgh) from the French . 

Leaving Alexandria, Braddock's army marched to Rock Creek in what is 

now Washington, D.C., then north on the established GeorgetownFrederick Road. Leaving Frederick, the army marched to Boonsboro. This 

portion of the route was incorporated into the National Old Trails Road 

Ocean-to-Ocean Highway. West of Boonsboro, however, Braddock's 
march dipped to the south, going through what was then Virginia before 

turning north to Cumberland, Maryland. From Cumberland, Braddock and 

his troops partly followed a path that had been blazed in 1751 by Colonel 

Thomas Cresap and Christopher Gist, with the help of a Delaware Indian 

named Nemacolin, on behalf of the Ohio Company. Washington had 

widened the path to 6 feet in 1754 on a campaign that ended in defeat at 

his makeshift Fort Necessity, about 15 miles north of the Pennsylvania 

line. Braddock, Washington, and their troops widened the path partway to 

Fort Duquesne. Before reaching their goal, however, they were defeated 

in a surprise attack and Braddock killed. The National Old Trails Road 

Ocean-to-Ocean Highway roughly followed Washington's and Braddock's 

route west of Cumberland. 

From Cumberland to St. Louis, the National Old Trails Road Ocean-toOcean Highway followed t he Cumberland Road (also called the National 

Road), the country's first great national road. After the Revolutionary War, 

Washington saw the need for such a road to link the States along the East 

Coast and the territories west of the Allegheny Mountains. He feared that 

without better transportation, the western territories would be drawn to the 

English in the north or Spanish interests in the south. President Thomas 

Jefferson signed the legislation authorizing the National Road on March 

29, 1806, to serve as a portage linking the Potomac and Ohio Rivers. It 

went from Cumberland, Maryland (the head of navigation on the Potomac 

River in those days) to the Ohio River at Wheeling. The National Road to 

Wheeling, built of crushed stone and completed in 1818, soon became the 

route of commerce that helped bind the union of settled East Coast 

communities and the pioneer communities in the territories. 

In 1820, funds were approved to extend the road to a point on the 

Mississippi River between St. Louis and the mouth of the Illinois River. 

The western terminus was changed to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1825. 

By 1833, the National Road was completed as far as Columbus, Ohio, and 

it would reach Springfield, Ohio, but beyond that point, the road was 

simply laid out to Vandalia (then the capital of Illinois). A dispute over 

location west of Vandalia was not resolved before the coming of the 

railroad rendered the road obsolete. The Federal Government began 

turning the National Road over to the States. West of the Ohio River, the 

States operated the old road as a turnpike, known as the National Pike. 

The third historic segment was Boon's Lick Road in Missouri. In 1806, two 

of Daniel Boone's sons, Nathaniel and Daniel, traveled from St. Louis to 

salt springs on the Missouri River, a distance of about 135 miles. They 

established a successful business transporting salt to St. Louis . The road 

they traveled on, extended to what is now known as Old Franklin, was 

called Boon's Lick Trail (without the "e"). Although it was more a trace than 

a highway, it proved to be the trail of migration across the State. 
The Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to Santa Fe was the fourth historic 

segment. The Santa Fe Trail was established in 1821, when Mexico 

gained its independence from Spain. Until then, Spain had banned foreign 

trade. In September, William Becknell left Old Franklin for Santa Fe with a 

pack train of trade goods. His trip to Santa Fe was so successful, that it 

inspired hundreds of other traders to follow his path. He also established 

the Cimarron Cut-Off. 

The brochure listed the fifth historic segment, Doniphan's Road from 

Santa Fe to Rincon, New Mexico, as a "Tentative" location. During the 

Mexican War in 1848, Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan led an army of 

Missouri Mounted Volunteers south along El Camino Real to Chihuahua, 

where he defeated his Mexican opponents. El Camino Real was part of a 

network of roads built by the Spanish to connect Mexico City with Spanish 

territory in what became the United States. The branch from Mexico City 

to Santa Fe (founded 1609) developed during the 16th Century. It was the 

first of the three branches, the other two ending in St. Augustine, Florida, 

and Sonoma, California. The central branch, roughly followed today by 

U.S. 25/1-25, is sometimes called "the oldest road in America." 

Kearny's Road to California (also listed as "Tentative"): The map in this 

brochure showed Kearny's supposed route following El Camino Real to El 

Paso, Texas, before turning west. As noted earlier, Kearny turned west 

with Lt. Kit Carson at Socorro. 

Judge Lowe, in his speech, explained: 

Other roads ought to be built. All National highways, by the 

General Government, but we have selected, and are 

concentrating our efforts on this as being entitled to first 

consideration. 

The brochure also reprinted Judge Lowe's letter to Chairman Bourne of 

the Joint Congressional Committee on Federal Aid in the Construction of 

Post Roads. Judge Lowe's view of Federal-aid was clear: 

There is much confusion of thought on the road question. 

So-called "Federal Aid"-a misleading phrase-is responsible 

for much of this confusion. It ought to find no place in road 

literature. The States need no "Aid" from the General 

Government or from any other source in building their own 

highways. No such phrase occurs in the Act establishing the 

National or Cumberland Road. No such expression 

anywhere occurs in the history of that highway. The 

Government did not "Aid" the States through which it ran and 

neither did the States "Aid" the Government. It was declared 
to be a National Highway and was built and maintained by 

the Government exclusively. It was as much under the 

supervision and control of the Government as if it had been 

a navigable river . . . . 

Let Congress exercise its undoubted authority, either 

directly, or through a Commission or Bureau of Highways, to 

decide what roads are National, and take over such roads 

for improvement and maintenance by the Government. 

He thought Congress should decide which national roads would be built 

first; any of those under consideration would cost about $20 million. The 

States and counties could then build a system of lateral or local roads 

intersecting the national roads: 

This system if adopted, will not require the levying of a single 

dollar of additional National taxation, will build at least one 

transcontinental highway annually, will add millions of dollars 

to property values, and thus increase enormously the 

Federal revenues, and add to the sum of human welfare and 

well being beyond any other single activity of government 

endeavor. 

No purpose to which the revenues can be applied will 

accomplish so much-will do so much good to so many 

people-will in a few years' time, place this country, in 

material prosperity, far above any country in the old world. 

And when this is done we will only marvel at our long delay, 

and wonder why we postponed the accomplishment of the 

greatest purpose ever conceived when it was the easiest 

and most obvious thing to do. 

Southwest Rival 

While the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association promoted its route as the 

Southwest link in the expected national transcontinental highway, 

residents along a rival for the southwest connection began to promote 

their own claim. 

The route was to the north along the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad from 

Kingman, Arizona, via Needles, Barstow, and Victorville, California, to Los 

Angeles. An article in The Needles Eye of June 22, 1912, reported 

improvements along the route in California. From Needles to Barstow, the 

road was partially macadamized. Signs along the route helped motorists 

find the road. A new road had been built from Barstow to Victorville. A 

skilled motorist with "a good machine," the article explained, will have little 
trouble on the road, but a motorist who is familiar only with hard roads 

"must not be disappointed if he is compelled to ask the assistance of the 

faithful horse to extricate him from some of the deep sand beds or pull him 

up some of the steep grades." 

In November, O. K. Parker of the Automobile Club of Southern California 

was traveling the area in a Franklin car mapping the roads for auto guides 

and placing signs along the best route. The Needles Eye reported in its 

November 22 issue that he had been in the city "visiting with auto 

enthusiasts." The newspaper reported that, "Mr. Parker states that the 

roads from San Bernardino here are far better than those by way of the 

southern route which has been used in the recent road races and which is 

getting prominence now because of its probable selection as the location 

of the Ocean-to-Ocean highway." 

The article explained that for practical reasons, improving the roads was 

important for the future of the area: 

The Ocean-to-Ocean highway means plenty of people 

passing through the country and with increasing numbers 

each year. Beside the addition they will give to local 

business directly, there will be the constant advertising of the 

country. 

The issue of November 30, 1912, reported on a meeting of the Mohave 

County Good Road Boosters in Needles to promote a route from Los 

Angeles via Barstow, Needles, Kingman, Seligman, Ash Fork, Williams, 

Flagstaff, Winslow, Holbrook, Springerville, and St. Johns, with 

connections to Prescott, Phoenix, Bisbee and other points "whereby the 

great auto traffic of the near future as well as the annual road races will 

pass through these various places." The boosters were convinced of the 

merit of their route: 

It is generally conceded that this Northern route has many 

advantages over the southern roads and accommodations 

and is through a country of great scenic beauty. The scenery 

in the Arizona mountains cannot be excelled anywhere and 

the Grand Canyon stands alone as the most gigantic work of 

nature. 

The accommodations were the restaurants, hotels, and lunchrooms 

operated by the Fred Harvey Company since 1870 along the Atchison, 

Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway (Santa Fe Railroad) throughout the 

southwest, and some other States, including Kansas. 
Participants discussed improvements underway and planned, while 

deciding on a course of action: 

Correspondence will be entered into at once with the other 

organizations and prospective organizations. Activity will be 

urged all along the line. It is probable that at least seven or 

eight machines from Needles accompanied with two or three 

from Kingman and some from perhaps further east will move 

in solid formation west from Needles to San Bernardino and 

obtain the co-operation of every person they will meet. At the 

same time autos from Kingman, augmented with several 

from here, will travel east through Arizona enthusing the 

people of that state. 

The boosters agreed with other boosters around the country that the goal 

was to have the road in shape by 1915 in time to carry traffic bound for the 

Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and the 

companion Panama-California Exposition in San Diego: 

It is estimated that there will be fifty thousand cars drive 

across the country in 1915. Some have estimated double 

this amount. If the best road is along the Santa Fe they will 

all come this way. 

Needles, the article concluded, would become the gateway to southern 

California. "BOOST NOW AND KEEP ON BOOSTING, else join the 

discard." 

By early December, the newspaper could report that the route from 

Needles to Los Angeles would be included in the road maps of the 

Automobile Club of Southern California and the Arizona Good Roads 

Association. 

On December 13, 1912, the Needles Good Roads Association met with O. 

K. Parker, who had reached the city in his Franklin with his wife. They 

agreed to call the northern road the Santa Fe-Grand Canyon-Needles 

route. As explained in the Eye the next day: 

The Grand Canyon attracts the traveler because of its widely 

known grandeur. Santa Fe designates the many 

accommodations to be had along the line as well as 

commemorates the old Santa Fe trail, while Needles means 

the gateway both east and west for this great highway over 

which the motorist will travel in increasing numbers as the 

years pass. 
The newspaper reprinted an article from Our Mineral Wealth of Kingman

that claimed, "The southern route booster is working entirely on long 

stretches of sand and hot air for his favored route for the National 

Highway." The article warned readers: 

They are as numerous as the leaves of a forest down there 

and they may pull the winding way through their jungles 

unless the northern few [who] backed the only practical route 

get into the fight in earnest and show these Wise Men of the 

East. 

The cause was boosted a few days later when Parker happened to be in 

Kingman the same day as O. D. Hamilton and Barry Locke, his 

counterparts from the Arizona Good Roads Association. Parker was 

traveling east promoting a Los Angeles-Phoenix road race through 

Needles, while Hamilton and Locke were headed west to continue 

mapping the route. The December 21 edition of The Needles Eye

described the meeting: 

The two charting parties were entertained at Kingman and a 

very enthusiastic meeting held and everything of the plans 

talked [about] here again gone over there and Needles 

greatly appreciates that it has the active co-operation of the 

people of Mohave County . . . . As our people already know 

that Mr. Parker is mapping the road for publication in the 

road book of California so are Messrs. Locke & Hamilton 

mapping the road from the Colorado River to Los Angeles 

for the purpose of publication in the new road book of 

Arizona soon to be published by the Arizona Good Roads 

Association. 

That same month, December 1912, Touring Topics carried an article 

headlined, "Still Another Nation-Wide Highway." 

The good roads enthusiasts of northern Arizona and of San 

Bernardino County, in California, are agitating for the 

improvement of the old but little traveled transcontinental 

route which connects with the Santa Fe trail at Santa Fe, 

New Mexico, and extends westerly by way of Albuquerque, 

Nation's Ranch, the Zuni Indian Cliffs, the Petrified Forest, 

Canyon Diablo, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, Ask [sic] 

Forks, Kingman, Needles, Daggett, San Bernardino and 

thence over the Foothill Boulevard to Los Angeles. 

The counties through which the road passed were cooperating to finance 

its improvement. San Bernardino County had pledged to pay whatever 
sum was needed to improve the road from San Bernardino to Needles. 

Mojave and Yavapai Counties in Arizona had guaranteed to raise 

$200,000 for the road from Needles through Kingman, Gold Roads, 

Seligman, Ash Forks to Williams. Cococino County "will aid" in improving 

the road past Flagstaff. "Easterly from Santa Fe, New Mexico," the article 

explained, "this highway will connect with the old Santa Fe trail which 

winds over the Raton Pass to Denver and easterly to Kansas City and 

Chicago." 

The route was "already negotiable and in general does not present the 

difficulties of the more southerly routes." The article suggested that when 

the route is improved, it will "undoubtedly become one of the most popular 

of the nationwide highways." The towns along the route were "exerting 

themselves to secure its early construction." It added: 

The earnestness with which they have addressed 

themselves to the problem is shown in the pledge of Needles 

and neighboring cities on the route to raise a purse of $8,000 

to induce the next Los Angeles-Phoenix race to use this 

course, and as an earnest of its good intention it has already 

raised $1,000 of this amount. 

On January 28, 1913, supporters gathered in Kingman for a convention to 

boost the route. On the 29th, they drove to San Bernardino where they 

finished organizing the Santa Fe-Needles-Grand Canyon National 

Highway Association "to encourage and foster the construction of a 

national highway from San Bernardino via Barstow and Needles, along the 

Santa Fe trail, through Arizona and New Mexico, to connect the Pacific 

with the Atlantic." They agreed on an emblem designed by George D. 

Hutchison, a Barstow businessman. The emblem consisted of a blue 

Greek cross within a red circle on a white background. The name of the 

highway appeared on the red circle. Buttons with the emblem were to be 

sold for $1 each to support the association's work. By April 11, 1913, the 

Eye reported that 60 buttons had been sold in the Barstow district, and a 

second batch had been made, for a total of 100. 

Engineer Parker addressed the convention. Touring Topics (February 

1913) described his talk: 

Mr. Parker exhibited more than fifty colored lantern slides 

showing scenes along this highway that were of unusual 

beauty. In addition to the views a detailed map of the route 

was displayed and in connection with it Mr. Parker described 

the road building methods that could be more 

advantageously used. A telling point in this lecture was Mr. 

Parker's statement that, in addition to the scenic and 
topographical advantages of this route, it was further favored 

by the unlimited amount of natural good road material that 

exists throughout Arizona and assures the construction of a 

high-class road at a moderate cost. 

The association planned its promotional activities, which included sending 

delegates to the automobile manufacturers convention at Indianapolis in 

February. Having heard of a plan for a $10 million transcontinental 

highway (the Lincoln Highway, as will be discussed later) to be built by the 

manufacturers, the association designated delegates to attend in an 

attempt to get a share of the money for their route. They also would attend 

the Second Federal Aid Good Roads Convention sponsored by AAA at 

the Raleigh Hotel in Washington, D.C. on March 6 and 7, 1913. 

Misconception, 1913 

The January 1913 issue of Better Roads printed a resolution passed by 

the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association, with Judge Lowe in 

attendance, during its annual convention in Santa Fe: 

To the end that no misconception shall exist anywhere as to 

the absolute affiliation, cooperation, and mutual good will of 

these associations, the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Association will cordially lend any proper aid to the 

organizing force of the National Old Trails Association in 

securing memberships in the States of California, Arizona, 

and New Mexico, and the National Old Trails Ocean-toOcean Highway Association by its president renews and 

reiterates the declaration of good will and cooperation stated 

in its constitution and reiterates its purpose to faithfully and 

earnestly cooperate with the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Association, and will lend any proper aid to the organizing 

force of the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association in 

securing members in the territory of the National Old Trails 

Ocean-to-Ocean Association in consummating the great 

purpose of the two associations. 

The magazine did not explain what misconception prompted the 

resolution, but it apparently related to the western end of the National Old 

Trails Ocean-to-Ocean Road. Judge Lowe's activities appeared to favor 

the route supported by the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway Association, but the 

map of the National Old Trails Ocean-to-Ocean Road listed the extension 

as tentative. 
The National Highways Association 

Judge Lowe was an early supporter of the National Highways Association. 

Charles Henry Davis conceived the association to persuade the Federal 

Government to build a 50,000-mile network of national highways. Davis 

was a wealthy road contractor who disposed of his business to divorce his 

new association from any hint of commercialism. "The National Highways 

Association," according to its publicity director, "believes that, when 

established, these national highways will increase the wealth, the power, 

and the importance of this country as nothing else can do besides that 

which has brought civilization to the savage, wealth to the poor, and 

happiness to all--GOOD ROADS" (Better Roads, October 1911). Its initial 

motto was "The Biggest Thing Ever Conceived, The Easiest Thing To Do." 

Judge Lowe fully supported the goal of national highways, so his 

involvement was natural. The National Highways Association was 

incorporated in the District of Columbia in early 1912, with Judge Lowe as 

a Vice-President. General Coleman Du Pont, the wealthy good roads 

advocate who built the Dupont Highway in Delaware, was the Chairman of 

the Board of National Councillors. A. L. Westgard became a VicePresident and Director of Transcontinental Highways in 1913. Many 

named trail associations were affiliated with the National Highways 

Association, which called them "departments" or "agencies." For example, 

Judge Lowe was not only President of the National Old Trails Road 

Association, but President of the National Old Trails Road Department of 

the National Highways Association. 

To read about the National Highways Association, see: 

www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/davis.htm 

On Capitol Hill 

In national elections held in November 1912, the American people chose a 

new President, Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. In anticipation 

of the 64th Congress that would convene in 1913, Representative 

introduced H.R. 28188, the latest version of his National Old Trails Road 

bill, on January 17, 1913. It authorized $20 million for construction of "The 

National Old Trails Road," which the bill described by identifying the cities 

it would pass through, including its route through the Southwest: "via La 

Junta and Trinidad in Colorado; via Santa Fe, Socorro, and Las Cruces in 

New Mexico; via Douglas, Phoenix and Yuma in Arizona; via El Centro, 

San Diego, and Los Angeles in California." As with all similar bills, H.R. 

28188 was referred to committee. 

Judge Lowe was in Washington on February 11 to testify before the Joint 

Committee on Federal Aid in Construction of Post Roads. His testimony 
began at 8 pm with Representative Dorsey W. Shackleford, the acting 

chairman, and Representatives Martin B. Madden and Richard W. Austin 

in attendance. 

Shackleford, who was from Sweet Springs, 

Missouri, had introduced a bill in 1912 that 

would have authorized $25 million a year out 

of the Federal surplus to improve rural free 

delivery routes based on the quality of the 

road. Under Representative Shackleford's bill, 

all roads over which the mails were carried 

would be classified as A, B, or C roads. The 

Federal Government would "rent" the use of 

these roads from the States for mail by paying 

$25 per mile for Class A roads (macadam), 

$20 for Class B roads (gravel), and $15 for 

Class C roads (dirt). While leaving the roads 

under State control, Shackleford believed the proposal would provide a 

stimulus to road improvement and benefit farmers throughout the country. 

He also believed that by reducing the cost of delivering the mail, the bill 

would save money for the Federal Government, which was losing $28 

million a year on rural free delivery. 

Although the bill had passed the House, 240 to 86, on May 2, 1912, it 

failed in the Senate on August 13. Opposition from the automobile 

interests, particularly AAA, was a factor in the Senate defeat of 

Shackleford's farm-oriented rental plan in the Senate. However, the 

Administration--that is, Director Logan Page of the Office of Public Roadsalso opposed the plan, on the grounds that the allowance per mile would 

not result in any significant amount of good roads. 

In testimony on February 11, 1913, Judge Lowe began by describing the 

National Old Trails Road Association, and its work in promoting the 

building or rebuilding and maintenance of a 3,180-mile national road from 

Washington to California over historic trails, including the El Camino Real 

of New Mexico and the trails over which Doniphan and Kearney marched. 

He told the committee that he was not an expert road builder, but based 

on the cost of macadam roads in Jackson County, he estimated a 16-foot 

wide macadam road would cost $6,000 per mile or $18.6 million. 

Approximately 25 million people lived within a day's automobile drive of 

the route. 

The Federal Government, he said, should build the road and maintain it. 

Asked if he was contemplating any other such roads, he said he was not: 

Congressman Dorsey W.

Shackleford
I know that what is called the northern route-from New York, 

by way of Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Des Moines, 

Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake, and San Francisco-is strongly 

advocated by John Brisbane Walker and others, and it would 

be a magnificent and important national road. 

He added that the route would be "out of commission on account of the 

weather" during much of the winter, while his central route "would be good 

at least 10 months out of the year, if not the entire year." 

When Representative Austin pointed out that the central route went 

through 11 States, and would not help the other States, Judge Lowe 

agreed that the other States should have national roads as well: 

I will say, by way of emphasis, that as president of the 

National Old Trails Association, we stand first for that, 

because that was the purpose and object of our creation, 

yet, if there is another road equally national in character, of 

equal importance commercially, or equal historic interest, 

and of every other kind of interest that might enter into the 

question, that ought to have precedence, then we will gladly 

give way and throw our entire organization behind that kind 

of a movement. 

Representative Madden asked Judge Lowe for his views on the idea that 

the States should cooperate with the Federal Government in the 

construction of roads. Judge Lowe explained that he initially favored 

should a plan: 

I believed that there ought to be close cooperation between 

the States and the National Government, and the National 

Government, perhaps, would hardly be justified in aiding any 

State unless the State showed a willingness to do something 

itself, but I have abandoned that idea entirely. 

He did not like the concepts of "aid" or "cooperation," he said: 

If all the States would "cooperate," and all the counties 

through which a road ran would "cooperate," and do it loyally 

and honestly, it might work; but when you divide 

responsibility and authority, and one would wait on the other, 

I question whether you would ever get a system of good 

roads . . . . I started out with the idea that they ought to be 

made to "cooperate," and the more I have thought of that the 

more I have thought it would lessen the prospect of going 
ahead-that it would retard road building rather than 

encourage. 

He favored a national system of roads built by the Federal Government 

"and let the States build theirs." The Federal Government should 

appropriate $20 to $25 million a year and build a transcontinental road 

each year. He also rejected the notion that the States could be counted on 

to maintain the road if the Federal Government built it: 

I think the whole question of maintenance was pretty well 

illustrated in the history of the old Cumberland Road. [Henry] 

Clay pronounced that as the greatest roadway in the world 

after it was finished, and he had seen the best roads. There 

may have been some burst or oratory in his statement, but . . 

. there was a magnificent highway built by the Government 

and maintained by it for more than a quarter century, and 

they turned it back to the States and it immediately went into 

decay and ruin. 

Asked to comment on Representative Shackleford's bill, Judge Lowe 

remarked that the main thing he liked about the bill was that it 

acknowledged the Federal Government's authority to apply its funds to the 

building of roads. As for the funding provision in the bill, he said, "I am 

afraid the appropriation will be used, as public funds so often are, by 

scattering them out among the congressional districts and among the 

States and counties and be frittered away and no roads, practically, will be 

built." 

In closing his testimony, Judge Lowe said: 

I have one other matter I want to explain, and I want to say 

this with all the emphasis that it is necessary it should be 

said, and that is this: That our organization is not affiliated 

with nor interested in any organization of manufacturers of 

automobiles, or any other line of industry. We have not at 

any time been influenced by any position they may have 

taken, or anything of that character. We are as independent 

of any influence of that character as it is possible to be. 

The contrast was with the Lincoln Highway Association. 

The AAA Federal Aid Good Roads Convention 

On March 6 and 7, Judge Lowe was in Washington for the AAA Federal 

Aid Good Roads Convention at the Raleigh Hotel, where he restated his 

views on the Federal role in road building. Representative Shackleford 
had addressed the convention the day before. In this setting, Judge Lowe 

felt freer to criticize the Shackleford bill than he had during his testimony: 

I have been a farmer all my life. I only differ with Judge 

Shackleford in this, that he farms the farmer, and I run the 

farm. (Laughter.) You have always got to take in a man's 

environment. Mr. Shackleford's district is sort of a shoestring 

there. I wish I could point it out to you on the map, and I wish 

I had time to tell you about the people there. They are good 

people, splendid people, but I can say about a good many of 

them that when they move, and they move frequently, that a 

good many in the lower end of his district when they move 

simply have to call the dogs and put out the fire (Laughter.) 

He referred to a farming community in the Congressman's district that had 

voted unanimously in favor of a bond for road construction: 

Mr. Shackleford speaks of the people that are in favor of 

such a proposition as "high-brows." I do not care anything 

about how high their brows are, but I see that some of them 

are educated up to the point where they believe in building 

roads . . . . 

Judge Lowe discussed the Old Trails Road, which he was certain could be 

finished in time for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915, but focused on 

the importance of national roads: 

Let the authority over the National roads remain where of 

right it belongs, in the National Government, under the 

supervision and control of National authority. (Applause.) 

And let the States and counties manage their own affairs in 

their own way. 

Now, let us get behind a single project. If it be not my project 

let it be yours, and if we decide on taking up some other 

proposition other than mine, I will back it with all the power I 

have. But let us get behind something definite, and stand for 

it, not only in this Convention, but when this convention 

adjourns and we go home let us stand for it; and talk for it; 

and if we do that before the Ides of next November you will 

see the Congress of the United States obeying our will and 

giving us the project we have been hoping for during all 

these long years. We will then come in and carry out a 

project that will do more for the up-building of the country; do 

more for the progressive ideas of the country; do more for 

the school system of the country; do more for the churches 
of the country; more for the patriotism and manhood and 

womanhood of the country than any project ever conceived 

in the mind of man. (Applause.) 

Second National Convention, 1913 

By the time the National Old Trails Road Ocean-to-Ocean Highway 

Association held its second annual convention on April 29 and 30, 1913, 

the Santa Fe-Grand Canyon-Needles National Highway Association was 

ready . 

E. J. Kirker, representing the Old Trails Road, had visited Needles a few 

days earlier to perfect a branch organization. Kirker informed boosters that 

the decision on routing through the Southwest would be made at the 

annual meeting-and it would be a hard fight. As the Eye had explained in 

its April 26 edition, the "so-called Ocean-to-Ocean Highway via Yuma" 

had an advantage in population. Although the Needles boosters felt they 

had the advantage of climate, proximity to railroad, and accommodations, 

"the greatest advantage we have is that most of our road is built." 

The 1913 convention was held in the Midland Building, the Old Trails 

headquarters in Kansas City. Estimates of delegates ranged from 250 to 

400. However, even before the meeting began, G. D. Hutchison, 

representing the Grand Canyon route, was ready for what he called the 

hardest fight of his life. In the edition of May 9, 1913, the Eye explained 

that publicity had been his focus: 

He saw the newspaper men first, told them his delegation 

was there to get the road, and nothing contributed to his 

success so much as that first impression on the newspaper 

men. He went immediately to the Star's art department and 

had a map made showing THE route to California. Barstow 

was marked by a flag, being the most important point on the 

road, of course. When the convention met, the principal thing 

in sight of the delegates was that map. 

The debate on routing took place during the afternoon of April 29. An 

amendment was offered to amend the association's constitution to adopt 

the Grand Canyon Route between Santa Fe and the Pacific Coast as the 

official route of the National Old Trails Road. Either during this session or 

that evening, O. K. Parker spoke in support of the change: 

The Santa Fe, Grand Canyon and Needles National 

Highway follows closely the route of the Santa Fe railway 

from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, the route being approximately 

that of the Kearney trail. It will form the western link of the 
Old Trails National Highway. There is a good road most of 

the way and by the middle of the summer it will be posted 

with signs. The posting of the Santa Fe trail will have been 

completed by that time, so there will be a well marked 

highway from Kansas City to the coast. 

Aside from Hutchison's publicity efforts, another factor in the decision was 

creation of a new rival, the Southern National Highway. It had been 

established during a meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, on February 12-

13, 1913. Governor Locke Craig of North Carolina had called the 

convention with the principal object of choosing a route from Washington, 

D.C., to connect with the El Paso-San Diego road. Dell Potter, who had 

played a key role during the first Old Trails Road convention in support of 

the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, was elected president of the Southern 

National Highway Association. 

With the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway now part of a rival transcontinental 

highway, delegates to the Old Trails convention adopted the Grand 

Canyon Route as the Pacific Coast link. It was not a certain thing, though, 

as the Eye explained: 

As soon as the motion was carried to make this the main 

road, some of our delegates rushed out to wire the good 

news home-before the chairman had declared the motion 

carried. The borderland delegates took this opportunity to 

continue the debate, but our warhorse [Hutchison] kept them 

at bay until the other delegates returned to cinch the road. 

The constitution was amended to adopt the official route west of Santa Fe: 

through Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico; Holbrook, 

Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams, Ashfork, Seligman, Kingman, 

Yucca, and Topeka [Topock], Arizona; Needles, Coffs 

[Goffs], Bacdad [Bagdad], Barstow, San Bernardino, Upland, 

San Gabriel to Los Angeles, and from Barstow through 

Bakersfield, Corcoran, Fresno, Merced, Stockton to San 

Francisco, California. 
Recognizing that the adopted route, especially 

across western New Mexico, was not ready 

for automobile traffic, t he association 

approved a detour through Socorro and 

Magdalena, New Mexico, and Springerville 

and St. Johns, Arizona. 

The association also dropped "Ocean-toOcean" from its name. Hereafter, it was 

known simply as the National Old Trails Road 

Association. The new slate of vice presidents and state organizers 

reflected the change as well. California would now be represented by 

Hutchison (vice president) and Ralph E. Swing (organizer) of San 

Bernardino. John R. Whiteside (vice president) of Kingman and Father 

Cypriano Rian Vabre of Flagstaff represented Arizona. The 

representatives from New Mexico were Harvey M. Shields (vice president) 

of Dawson and C. C. Manning of Gallup. 

Although the routing decision had been the most important action of the 

convention, the delegates had much else to occupy them. During the first 

day, several addresses were presented, including one by Professor 

Williams. That evening, Miss Gentry presented an illustrated address on 

the "Old Trails Road." She was followed by Stanton Warburton, who had 

represented the State of Washington for one term in the U.S. House of 

Representatives (March 4, 1911 through March 3, 1913). During that term, 

he had introduced a bill calling for Federal construction of trunk highways 

linking Washington to the State capitals. He told the delegates: 

The government soon or late must build and maintain 

national roads. Any other system of extensive road building 

only opens a door to graft and makes impossible a national 

system of highways. The Shackleford Bill is a pork barrel 

scheme providing for state aid in small amounts . . . . I claim 

above all else for my plan that it treats every State alike, 

large or small, rich or poor, and, furthermore, that my system 

will serve the greatest number of people. My plan provides 

for eighteen thousand miles of highways, and, on or within 

ten miles of these highways, live two-thirds of the inhabitants 

of the United States. 

I would have the government build the best road that can be 

built and by that I do not mean a macadamized road, for that 

is not the best . . . . I will insist upon eighteen thousand miles 

of pavement in my system, pavement equal to the best in the 

streets of your city. My roads will cost from $15,000 to 

$20,000 a mile and it means a total cost of about 300 million 

US Map showing location

of Old Trails Road
dollars. The figure at first staggers congressmen to whom I 

have outlined my project. They ask breathlessly, "How will 

you raise the money?" 

I propose to obtain the money by increasing the tobacco tax, 

the least taxed luxury in America. By increasing the tobacco 

tax to where it was in 1879 the government will acquire 70 

million dollars a year, which will build my system and pay for 

it in five years. 

During a similar speech to the AAA Federal Aid Good Roads Convention, 

Warburton had been asked what type of pavement he preferred. He 

responded, "Brick or cement, whatever is the best, I don't care what it 

costs--$15,000 or $20,000 a mile-because in the long run the best is the 

most economical thing to do." He also explained that the tax on tobacco 

had been lowered because Congress had been concerned about the 

growing surplus in the treasury. At that point in his speech, Judge Lowe 

asked how the war with Spain had been financed in 1898. He knew the 

answer, but Warburton replied, "We fought the war with Spain by doubling 

the internal revenue tax on smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff." 

After the war, the tax had been reduced to the 1879 level. 

According to an account of the Old Trails convention in the June 1913 

issue of Southern Good Roads, Warburton's "address probably attracted 

more attention and provoked more discussion than any other feature of 

the convention." His ideas were reinforced by Charles Henry Davis, who 

addressed the delegates regarding his bill to establish a National 

Highways Commission that would determine which roads should be built. 

He had nothing but contempt for "Federal-aid," as he explained: 

"What's in a name?" has been asked. Everything or almost 

everything! "Give a dog a bad name and it sticks to him." It is 

the same with roads. They are now laboring under that 

infernally confusing, false, and misleading epithet, "Federal 

Aid." Responsible for delay in Congressional action! 

Responsible for the continuation of the activities of those 

more interested in their individual advancement than in the 

attainment of good roads! ...It can be made to mean 

anything which suits the selfish desires of the user! 

Indefinite! Alluring! Uncertain! Vicious! It does not spell 

GOOD ROADS! 

If Federal-aid became a law, he said, people would awaken one day "to 

the fatal error and their ignorance in permitting such extravagance, 

incompetence, and graft as the result thereof." He favorably quoted Judge 

Lowe: 
And, as your President has said, "By the Eternal" we will 

provide so-called statesmen responsible therefore "with a 

long and much needed vacation." 

During the afternoon of April 30, the delegates were given an automobile 

tour of the city's boulevard, courtesy of the Kansas City Automobile 

Dealers' Association and the Kansas City Automobile Club. In the closing 

session later that day, the delegates unanimously re-elected Judge Lowe 

as President and association secretary Frank Davis of Herrington, 

Kansas. Miss Gentry was named Honorary Vice-President, while 

Professor Williams remained Advisory Vice-President. 

The delegates adopted 15 resolutions, constituting according to Better 

Roads magazine, the "strongest road platform ever made." Resolution No. 

1 stated: 

That it is with the deepest respect we express our 

profoundest appreciation of the devoted, unselfish and 

patriotic service to the cause of the National Old Trails Road, 

and to this organization [by] that splendid and powerful 

association, the Daughters of the American Revolution, 

whose untiring zeal and consecrated devotion has done 

more than all others in preserving to future generations the 

memorable roads and landmarks in the pioneer history of 

this country, and that we will hold in everlasting 

remembrance their invaluable service to the great purpose 

we have so much at heart. 

Resolution No. 2 sent greetings to residents of Ohio who had been 

devastated by floods, but whose legislature had voted a one-half mill tax 

to restore roads, including the old National Road. Similarly, Resolution No. 

3 encouraged residents of Missouri to support a constitutional amendment 

that would authorize a one mill level for roads. 

The Lincoln Highway 

Resolution No. 4 stated: 

That we recognize with sincere appreciation the great 

business movement of a great and rapidly expanding 

industry, in process of promotion by Carl G. Fisher, of 

Indianapolis, whereby the money is being rapidly raised with 

which to construct at least one transcontinental road of the 

highest type known to modern engineering ability. Not an 

exclusive "Automobile Road," but a great national free 

thoroughfare, for the accommodation of all sorts of 
transportation. We commend the enterprise, and endorse 

with heartiest approval, this effort as being the greatest 

business and philanthropic scheme ever conceived by the 

mind of men; and when consummated it should, and we 

have no doubt will be taken over by the Government and 

maintained as a National Highway for all time to come. 

In 1912, automobile entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher of Indianapolis had 

conceived the idea of enlisting his friends in the automobile industry to 

build what he initially called a coast-to-coast rock highway from New York 

City to San Francisco. He estimated it would cost $10 million, but could be 

completed in time for the 1915 exposition in San Francisco. In September 

1912, Fisher met with other automobile industry leaders to ask them to 

pay for the proposed road. "Let's build it," he told the group, "before we're 

too old to enjoy it!" Publicity about this idea, renamed the Lincoln Highway, 

had prompted the Santa Fe-Grand Canyon-Needles National Highway 

Association to think about sending a delegation to Indianapolis to try to 

secure some of the funds. 

The Lincoln Highway Association was incorporated in Detroit in July 1, 

1913, on the same day Fisher led a caravan of vehicles out of Indianapolis 

on a pathfinding tour to the West Coast. On September 14, 1913, the 

Lincoln Highway Association announced its route, which followed a more 

direct route to San Francisco than would have been possible if an 

alignment had been chosen through the Southwest. 

The Lincoln Highway Association soon realized that Fisher's cost estimate 

was too low. Moreover, expecting private businesses, even automobile 

companies, to build the road was unrealistic. The road would have to be 

built by State and local governments (with Federal-aid after 1916). Private 

contributions were practical only in a few unusual cases. Nevertheless, the 

Lincoln Highway Association was the most powerful of the named trail 

associations, and t he Lincoln Highway was the most famous American 

road of its day . For more information, see: 

www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/lincoln.htm 

Additional Resolutions 

Resolution No. 5 adopted the view Judge Lowe had expressed during his 

testimony before the Joint Committee. The delegates called on Congress 

to finance construction and maintenance of the National Old Trails Road, 

but "stand equally and earnestly" in favor of a general system of National 

highways to be built and maintained by a national authority. To this end, 

Resolution No. 6 explained that Federal-aid was "obnoxious in principle 

and vicious in application." It would revive the "'pork barrel' system of 
legislation, and tends to corrupt Congress and the whole body politic as 

well." 

The delegates, in Resolution No. 7, endorsed the idea that any 

permanently improved road taken over as a national highway "should be 

valued and paid for by the government." Resolution No. 8 cited the 

experience with the Cumberland Road as evidence that furnishing "aid" to 

States or local bodies in expectation that they would reciprocate or 

cooperate would be a "waste of money." 

Resolution No. 9 pledged "our heartiest cooperation and affiliation with all 

organized efforts to aid and assist" in improving the common roads of the 

country. The universal effort to improve roads was "the most far reaching 

in its influence, the greatest factor in material development and in moral 

and educational advancement the world has ever known." In this regard, 

the delegates adopted Resolution No. 10, which heartily endorsed "the 

wisdom of the Act of Congress creating the office of Public Roads in the 

Agriculture Department." The Office, according to the resolution, had 

conducted itself in a "very able and efficient manner." 

Although the delegates favored Federal road construction, they adopted 

Resolution No. 11 in favor of State and local activities in building State and 

local highways, "which should be so systematized as to connect with and 

supplement a system of national highways." They also endorsed Charles 

Henry Davis' bill for establishing a National Highways Commission, stating 

that it "should have full charge and authority" over construction of national 

highways. 

The delegates endorsed a bill introduced by Representative R. L. Henry of 

Texas to establish a Committee of Roads (Resolution No. 13) 

Judge Lowe introduced Resolution No. 14 expressing the support of the 

delegates for restoring the tobacco tax to 1879 levels to pay for the 

building and maintenance of national highways. When the resolution was 

introduced, Representative Shackleford spoke up. He did not object to the 

tax portion of the resolution. "I move to amend this by saying it shall be set 

apart as a sacred fund to be used in the construction and maintenance of 

such roads as Congress shall determine to give aid to by Congressional 

legislation." The Committee on Resolutions rejected the Congressman's 

change. The committee then voted to adopt Judge Lowe's resolution. 

Resolution No. 15 recommended that the equipment used to build the 

Panama Canal "should be brought home to help in construction of national 

highways." 
Confirming the Route Change 

The Eye, in its edition of May 30, 1913, informed readers that Judge Lowe 

had confirmed the change in the western end of the National Old Trails 

Road: 

A circular issued by President J. M. Lowe, of the Old Trails 

National Road, for the purpose of setting at rest all question 

of the route chosen by the members of that association in 

convention at Kansas City May 1, speaks of the right of the 

delegates to choose the Santa Fe-Grand Canyon-Needles 

National Highway as the route to the coast, and concludes 

as follows: 

They (the western delegates) were a live, wideawake bunch, absolutely frank and fair in their 

demeanor, and won their contention in fair and 

open contest. They are entitled to the highest 

respect for the manly manner in which they 

presented their claims, and from information 

received since the convention adjourned, we 

are much inclined to the opinion that no 

mistake was made in thus definitely locating 

the western end of this road. 

It is settled, definitely and for all time, and it but remains that 

we shall now unite and stand as one man in favor of the 

entire integrity of the road as adopted at this convention. 

While reporting this good news, the Eye summarized a story that had 

appeared in The Los Angeles Examiner on May 29 about hardship and 

danger on the Borderland/Ocean-to-Ocean route: 

H. W. Hall and bride, of Long Beach, on their honeymoon, 

accompanied by his parents and sister, in two machines 

arrived in Phoenix after many days of fighting their way 

through drifting sand on the road through Yuma and Mexico. 

By contrast, the Eye pointed out that, "The tourist has no nightmares" on 

the Santa Fe-Grand Canyon-Needles National Highway. 

The routing change was further confirmed in correspondence between 

Judge Lowe and Governor W. C. McDonald of New Mexico. After 

receiving Judge Lowe's circular letter, The Governor wrote on May 29 to 

confirm that the routing change "must govern whether or no for all time to 

come." He had not known the convention was taking place and wanted to 
know who represented New Mexico's interests. He wanted "to know all 

about it so that the state highway commission may have full knowledge 

before deciding upon what course to pursue in regard to highway 

construction through New Mexico." 

Judge Lowe replied on May 31, explaining that the association had been 

"at sea" on the routing west of Santa Fe: 

Every other route which had been discussed was tentative 

as no one having authority had ever taken any action 

locating that end of the road. We notified the people of New 

Mexico, Arizona and California along the different routes 

which had been suggested to be here prepared to take such 

action as they thought best. At the convention the delegates 

from each of these States were assigned to a room and 

each set of delegates by majority vote located the road 

through each State. When this was done it was reported 

back to the convention as a whole and upon motion, the 

action of such delegates was approved by the convention. 

Thereupon the constitution of our association was amended 

adopting the line as suggested from Santa Fe via 

Albuquerque, Holbrook, Flagstaff, Needles, etc. Therefore so 

far as this organization is concerned it stands for the Old 

Trails Road as defined in its constitution as it now exists, as 

running practically from the tide-water of the Atlantic to the 

tide-water of the Pacific over the line as above suggested. 

The letter pointed out the association's affiliation with the National 

Highways Association, which had adopted the National Old Trails Road 

"as pre-eminently the back-bone and Central Factor in a Great System of 

National Highways." He added that the national highway system proposed 

by the association included "extension of the Camino Real and thence via 

Borderland Route to Phoenix, etc." 

He concluded with a warning about the Lincoln Highway: 

These differences as to location are natural but greatly to be 

regretted. Instead of effecting any good they often drive 

away the possibility of anybody's being benefited. As 

illustrating what I mean, there is active and tremendous force 

behind the proposition to extend a central road through 

Denver, Salt Lake, etc., to San Francisco. The Southwest 

will be to blame if by their quarrels among themselves they 

drive a great trans-continental highway entirely out of New 

Mexico and Arizona. 
On June 3, Governor McDonald thanked Judge Lowe for his reply, adding: 

You may depend upon me to do what I can to get this road 

through New Mexico. The important thing is to have it. The 

state highway commission will assist in every way possible 

to accomplish this end. 

Lt. Edward F. Beale's Wagon Road 

Miss Gentry and the D.A.R. had primarily been interested in the Old Trails 

Road for its historic associations. Although Judge Lowe made history a 

regular part of his publicity for the route, it had lost some of its historic 

associations, including the link to the Oregon Trail, beginning with the 

organizing convention in April 1912. Now, as a result of the second 

convention, the Old Trails Road appeared to lose another part, namely 

"Kearny's route," as shown on Miss Gentry's early map of the historic trails 

road. As noted earlier, the D.A.R.'s claim that General Kearney marched 

through Flagstaff on his way to California was incorrect. Nevertheless, the 

Grand Canyon Route had a long history of its own. 

A pamphlet called The Old Santa Fe Trail Across Arizona discussed some 

of the history. It began by commenting on the title of the booklet: 

For the benefit of the reader who may feel somewhat 

surprised by the title of the present booklet, I beg to state 

that the Old Santa Fe Trail Across Arizona takes him back 

many years past the time of the triumphant march of General 

Stephen W. Kearney . . . in the year 1846 . . . 

Father Cypriano, the Arizona representative of the National Old Trails 

Road Association, wrote the foreward. He traced the route in Arizona to 

such early Spanish explorers as Hernando de Alarcon (1540) and 

Melchior Diaz (1541), but especially to Don Juan De Onate, Governor of 

New Mexico (1604), and two Franciscan friars, Father Silvestre Velez de 

Escalante and Father Francisco Garces (1776). Governor Onate, having 

established the forerunner of El Camino Real in 1598, explored northern 

Arizona, looking for what he thought would be the South Sea and a trade 

route to the Orient. 

In 1776, Spain's viceroy in Mexico City dispatched Fathers Escalante and 

Francisco Dominguez to find a trail to connect Santa Fe with the missions 

Father Junipero Serra was establishing in California. They pursued a route 

through Utah, north of the Grand Canyon, that became part of the traders' 

route known as the Old Spanish Trail. Father Garces, on a similar mission 

that same year, explored the route across northern Arizona that was the 

predecessor of the National Old Trails Road across Arizona. 
The Epilogue described the point of the booklet: 

The OCEAN-TO-OCEAN HIGHWAY is in the air. The great 

and latest mode of transportation had to become almost a 

necessity before the crying need of good roads in this 

country was noticed. Now the movement for a good 

automobile road from the Atlantic to the Pacific is fairly 

launched, and it will never stop till its object has been fully 

secured . . . . 

To decide wisely and prudently the vital question of locating 

[the] route across Arizona [the highway-man] has to bear in 

mind the reasons that have brought about the success of 

similar undertakings in other parts of the world. 

It must be granted, in the first place, that this highway is not 

going to be a freight traffic road, and, in the second place, 

that the mere feat of motoring from the Atlantic seaboard to 

the surf-splashed beach of the Pacific Coast, regardless of 

the intervening country, is not going to be sufficient to render 

the road popular with the sight-seeing tourist. What is, 

therefore, the wisest solution to this problem? 

. . . Now, the tourist does not leave his home to go and see 

alfalfa, potato, beet, corn and wheat fields, profitable though 

they be to their owners. That point is well known to the 

people of Europe. Hence, their touring highways are all laid 

out across historical and scenic fields . . . . If, therefore, you 

wish to establish a popular highway across Arizona, you will 

by all means locate it as close as possible to and over the 

dust-covered tracks of the Spanish Conquistador's steed and 

the venerable trail worn across Northern Arizona years ago 

by the sandal and the staff of the Franciscan Friar. Add to 

those historical associations, the wonderful scenery with 

which they are encompassed as with a frame and you will 

readily concede that the Old Santa Fe Trail across Arizona 

described in this booklet is the logical and natural forerunner 

of the coming Transcontinental Highway. 

The route that became the National Old Trails Road across New Mexico 

and Arizona can be traced back to early Spanish explorers, but their exact 

routes are in dispute. Moreover, the path of the National Old Trails Roads 

did not become a major travel route until the mid-19th Century. Its 

prominence dates to the effort to construct a transcontinental railroad. The 

Federal Government dispatched surveying crews to explore possible 

routes, including a crew under Captain Amiel W. Whipple of the Army 
Topographical Corps in 1 853. Beginning July 15, 1853, Whipple led a 

wagon train of about 70 men along the 35th parallel from Fort 

Smith, Arkansas, to Los Angeles, generally following a route traveled by 

Captain Randolph B. Marcy in 1849. It went through Indian Territory (now 

Oklahoma) and the Texas Panhandle to Albuquerque. After crossing the 

Rio Grande River, the expedition struggled for 3 months across New 

Mexico and Arizona to the Colorado River. The survey crew reached Los 

Angeles on March 21, 1854. 

When sectional disputes stopped Congress from authorizing a 

transcontinental railroad, it instead authorized construction of several 

wagon roads to meet the demand, temporarily, for better communications 

with the West Coast. The Army selected Lieutenant Edward F. Beale to 

establish a wagon road along the 35th parallel from Fort Defiance on the 

modern New Mexico/Arizona border to the Colorado River. 

Using Whipple's report as a guide, Beale worked on the road from 1857 to 

1859, diverging from Whipple's route in many cases. The work on Beale's 

Road cost $200,000. During the work, Beale tested the usefulness, 

endurance, and economy of a herd of camels. The test was part of an 

experiment to see if camels could help meet transportation needs in the 

southwestern deserts. In Beale's opinion, the experiment was a success, 

but the U.S. Army did not pursue it. 

At first, Beale's Road was criticized, particularly by northern California 

interests. They feared that Beale's Road and another wagon road further 

south would divert traffic from their part of the State. They had consistently 

criticized any transportation plan, such as the early overland mail routes, 

that used a southern entrance to the State, even though the Sierra 

Nevada passes in their part of the State were closed by snow throughout 

the winter. At one point, even The Los Angeles Star turned against the 

road. Gerald Thompson, in Edward F. Beale and the American West

(University of New Mexico Press, 1983), cited the newspaper's issue of 

October 1, 1859: 

The paper quoted the Missouri Republican, which stated that 

many wagon trains departing from Texas and Arkansas over 

Beale's Road had been forced to turn back with great losses-

-and then took the southern route through El Paso, Tucson, 

Yuma, to Los Angeles. According to many emigrants, "the 

Beale route is worse than a humbug--it is a swindle." 

Nevertheless, Beale's Road soon proved its value, as a wagon road and a 

location for the Santa Fe Railroad in the 19th Century and a main travel 

corridor in the 20th Century. "In opening this highway," according to 
Thompson, "Beale joined the small group of explorers who left an 

enduring mark on the American West during the nineteenth century." 

West of Needles, the road also can be traced to Father Garces. Early in 

1776, he traveled north along the Colorado River to a point near Needles. 

Turning west, Father Garces reached the San Gabriel mission near 

today's Los Angeles on March 24. He had ". . . followed the approximate 

route over which the Santa Fe Railroad was built through the Mohave 

Desert to Los Angeles a century later," according to Jay J. Wagoner's 

Early Arizona (The University of Arizona Press, 1975). The National Old 

Trails Road followed this route to the vicinity of Barstow and Victorville, 

before turning toward Cajon Pass. After this pathfinding mission, Father 

Garces returned to the Mojave Indian villages near Needles for his trip 

across northern Arizona that same year. 

The Spanish discovered Cajon Pass in 1772 when Pedro Fages, military 

Governor of California, was tracking a group of deserters from San Diego. 

Father Garces' 1776 route, with a variation through Cajon Pass, became 

the route of the mountain men, the fur traders, and the pack trains. In 

February 1831, William Wolfskill, a Kentucky trapper, traveled from the 

Mojave Indian villages near Needles through Cajon Pass into the San 

Bernardino Valley and on to Los Angeles. Alice Fisher Simpson, writing in 

the Centennial issue of California Highways and Public Works (September 

1950), explained the importance of his trip: 

Wolfskill's trip was a noteworthy one, since his course over 

the mountains is clearly defined. From Santa Fe to 

California, his route approximated more closely the trail later 

followed by the New Mexican caravans than did that of 

[earlier traders]. It might therefore be said that it was William 

Wolfskill who established the famous pack-train route known 

as the "Old Spanish Trail," used by the Santa Fe - Los 

Angeles caravans for nearly two decades. The Old Spanish 

Trail bypassed most of northern Arizona, passing through 

Utah instead, as had Fathers Escalante and Dominguez in 

1776. 

Once each year, pack trains accompanied by a heavy (sic) 

armed guard, made the round trip over the trail. California 

bound, the caravans carried blankets, Mexican woolen 

goods, silver and all sorts of American-made wares from St. 

Louis. On the return trip, the traders brought back mainly 

Chinese goods, silks and the like, obtained from trading 

vessels on the California coast. They also drove back horses 

and mules. 
As this background suggests, the National Old Trails Road retained the 

concept of linking historic trails, if not the glamour of the names involved in 

the abandoned original routing. 

On The Cumberland Road 

Judge Lowe's promotion of the National Old Trails Road took him to 

Zanesville, Ohio, one of the cities along the route, on July 21, 1913, to 

deliver a speech on the history of the National Road. His purpose was to 

demonstrate that the Federal Government had a continuing obligation to 

improve the historic highway established by legislation in 1806. 

He began by quoting the 1805 committee report on the bill. The report 

noted that rivers tend to unite the interests and promote the friendships of 

those along its banks, while mountains tend "to disunion and 

estrangement." On this basis, the report made clear the purpose of the 

National Road: 

In the present case, to make the crooked ways straight, and 

the rough ways smooth will, in effect, remove the intervening 

mountains, and by facilitating the intercourse of our western 

brethren with those of the Atlantic, substantially unite them in 

interest, which, the committee believe, is the most effectual 

cement of union applicable to the human race. 

In an era when river travel was more efficient than overland travel, the 

National Road met this goal by providing a land bridge from the Potomac 

River at Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River at Wheeling. Given the 

sensitivity to the issue of States rights, the 1806 Act authorized 

construction of the road by the Federal Government only with the consent 

of the States through which it passed. 

The construction authorized in the 1806 Act was financed with revenue 

from the sale of public land in Ohio. When Ohio was admitted as a State in 

1802, a reserve fund was established consisting of 5 percent of the 

revenues received by the Federal Government from the sale of public 

lands in the State. Of the 5 percent, the government set aside 2 percent 

for roads leading to the State, while the remaining 3 percent was for roads 

in Ohio. In May 1820, a new act authorized a similar arrangement to 

generate revenues for extension of the road through Ohio, Indiana, and 

Illinois, where Congress intended for the road to reach the east bank of 

the Mississippi River. 

Again in March 1825, legislation used the reserve fund method of 

financing a survey to extend the road through the State capitals to 

Jefferson City, the capital of the new State of Missouri. The road, 
however, stopped at Vandalia. While communities seeking to be the 

Mississippi River link debated the routing question, the Federal 

Government lost interest in the road because of the emergence of the 

railroad as the best means of land travel. 

One alternative was to install toll booths to raise revenue for upkeep and 

construction, but the Federal right to collect tolls on State property was 

unclear. Therefore, the question was turned over to the States. In 1831 

and 1832, Pennsylvania and Maryland agreed to take over the road, but 

only after the Federal Government put it in good repair and furnished 

funds for toll houses and gates. These two States had the oldest section 

of the National Road, dating to 1813, and it was in poor shape. Ohio and 

Virginia (West Virginia was part of Virginia until the Civil War) also agreed 

to conversion, but did not require Federal repair of the road as a condition 

of State takeover. Congress, by law enacted on July 3, 1832, assented to 

the conditions imposed by Pennsylvania and Maryland, declaring that the 

assent would "remain in force during the pleasure of Congress." Similar 

assent was given for Ohio and Virginia in March 1833. The reserve fund 

was again the revenue source. 

Judge Lowe argued that Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri never consented to 

accept their portions of the road and that Congress never passed 

legislation turning the road over to them. Moreover, those States received 

only limited benefits from the reserve funds raised in their boundaries and 

used for the road, and Missouri received nothing more than a survey. 

Therefore, he said, legislation declaring it a "national highway" was not 

necessary in view of the prior legislation declaring it as such. Congress 

need only appropriate funds to rebuild, repair, and maintain the road. 

Under a similar concept of reserve funds, moreover, the road could be 

extended to the Pacific Ocean. 

After discussing later legislation during the 19th century, Judge Lowe 

turned to proposals to provide "aid" to the States. "Congress may pile 

dollars heaven high, and turn it over to the States or the congressional 

districts," he said, and it would still not fulfill the Federal commitments 

under the earlier legislation: 

The political reason for building national roads may not be as 

acute now as it was in the beginning of our great 

governmental experiment, but who shall say what dangers 

await us in the future? Who will deny the prophetic wisdom 

of the sages who planned this road? Who will deny the 

cohesive power of cementing the States by a great system 

of national highways? And who will lightly value the sacred 

promises solemnly made by the original thirteen States to 

induce the new territories to join the Union? Ohio has kept 
the faith, and for thirteen years her national road funds was 

appropriated beyond the borders of the State. Then she was 

joined in a similar compact by Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, 

and unitedly they built and maintained this road out of their 

own national road fund and thus saved the Union. They too, 

"kept the faith." Can the Government-can any government 

long survive which keeps only "Punic Faith" with its own 

people. 

("Punic," referring to the ancient Phoenician colony in Carthage, means 

faithless or treacherous.) 

Following publication of his speech in Better Roads, Judge Lowe informed 

members of the National Old Trails Road Association that "what we ask 

and all we ask is that the Government shall comply with and keep this 

agreement . . . . If the Government may refuse to build this road, then it 

may equally refuse the application of the money arising from the sales of 

the land provided for the school fund, or she may refuse any other 

obligation assumed, and turn any State back to its original territorial 

condition." 

In short, he believed the government should build the national highway 

across the States (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri) where 

commitments in the 19th century legislation had not been fulfilled. 

American Road Congress in Detroit 

From September 29, to October 4, 1913, highway interests gathered in 

Detroit for the Third American Road Congress under the auspices of the 

American Highway Association and AAA. Better Roads described the 

Congress as "an epoch-making meeting in the history of good roads." The 

magazine added: 

It was conceded on all hands that it was the greatest ever 

held, on this or any other continent. Greatest in attendancemore than 4,000 delegates registered-greatest in subjects 

discussed, and in expert intelligence displayed in their 

discussion-greatest in breadth and depth of patriotic 

endeavor to get together in an unselfish spirit of cooperative 

achievement. 

President Wilson sent a letter regretting he could not attend "to express, at 

least, the very deep interest which I feel in the whole matter of adequate 

road building in the United States." Wilson, a dedicated motorist who 

enjoyed regular jaunts around the Washington area, said, "Every man who 
wishes to see this great country made the most of must sympathize with 

the efforts now being made to weave its parts together by good roads." 

Charles B. Warren, representing Detroit's Board of Commerce, greeted 

the delegates enthusiastically. One reason, he said, for the city's interest 

in the American Road Congress was that Detroit's "progress and 

development is now largely bound up in the prosperity of the motor car 

industry, and these two-good highways and good motor cars-move along 

side by side." The city had another interest: 

And Detroit is interested in this other movement-in the 

Lincoln Memorial Highway. It appeals to our imagination, this 

idea of connected, improved highway from the Atlantic to the 

Pacific, binding many States of the Union closer together. It 

appeals to our sense of patriotism that this highway should 

be known as the "Lincoln Highway," for the spirit and the 

blessed memory of that man binds this Country together as 

the spirit and memory of no other American who ever lived. 

Logan Page told the delegates: 

A mighty wave of sentiment for better roads is sweeping 

over the country, and already the American people have 

entered upon a road building era which has no parallel in all 

history-not even the splendid era when Rome knit together, 

with massive military roads, the farflung outposts of her 

empire, nor the century of constructive work begun by 

Napoleon, which has given to France the most superb 

system of highways in the world. 

After discussing the history and benefits of road building, he explained the 

purpose he hoped the gathering would serve: 

I wish to express the hope that the American Road Congress 

may become more and more an annual clearinghouse, 

where the best thought and practice of good roads people 

throughout the United States and Canada may be 

exchanged, and started on an endless chain-so to speak-so 

that we may all benefit by the progress that each is making, 

and by avoiding the duplication of effort, so that the costly 

mistakes which have marked our course in road matters for 

over a century may not be made again and again. 

Page was followed by A. G. Batchelder, Chairman of the Executive Board 

of AAA. He recalled that "automobilists, once upon a time, used to half 

apologize for our participation in the road question." Then, they 
"awakened to the fact that we were the men who were using the roads 

more than anyone else." Next came the public complaint that the 

automobilists were wearing out the roads, to which Batchelder pleaded 

guilty: 

So we said that if we use the road more than anyone else 

and if we wear out the roads, it is up to us to get into this 

road movement good and hard with our work and energy; 

and, furthermore, as long as we are paying a road tax to use 

the roads, we might as well wade in and swim in the open 

and struggle along with the rest of the people. 

After discussing concerns about the rights of counties and States, he 

summarized AAA's position: 

I think that the average man is willing that the State shall 

relieve the counties of roads that are really interstate in their 

use, and we simply advance another point when we say that 

the States themselves are going to look to the general 

government for a certain amount of cooperation and support 

in those roads that go from State to State. 

Referring to Logan Page, Batchelder concluded his short address by 

saying that, "when we can get the representatives of our national 

government to participate with us on this occasion, there cannot be any 

other than a mighty good result." 

The next speaker was Judge Lowe. The proceedings of the American 

Road Congress summarized his speech, which covered the history of the 

Cumberland Road and the National Old Trails Road Association. Then, in 

"a very forceful manner," he presented an argument in support of Federal 

involvement in road building from a constitutional standpoint by drawing 

attention to the "parallel question" of the tracts of land set aside by the 

Federal Government for railroads and the funds appropriated for the 

Panama Canal. According to the summary: 

He then made a stirring plea for the building of great national 

highways by the federal government. He said, however, that 

he was not absolutely committed to this plan and might be 

converted to the plan providing that the State, county, and 

township, should contribute an equal amount, dollar for 

dollar, with the government. His reason for opposing the 

latter plan was the idea of retaxing the people before they 

would be permitted to have the benefit of the money that 

they had already been taxed for, contending that they should 

be appropriated at first hand by the federal government for 
the best interests of the people, the more important of which 

he believed to be the building of good roads. 

Judge Lowe further said, "I cannot for the life of me conceive 

of any great difference in taking the money to build roads out 

of the national treasury, or out of the State treasury, or out of 

the county treasury, except that Uncle Sam's pocket is the 

deepest and biggest and the government has the power of 

taxation that the States and counties have not. He can 

replete his pocketbook very readily, the State cannot, neither 

can the county. Now that's the biggest pocketbook and this 

is our money, all the time, and I am in favor of building roads 

out of it . . . . If anything is written in the Book of Fate more 

clearly than any other it is that this government has now 

reached a point where it is going to take a hand and a large 

hand in building a system of national highways. It is sure to 

win, and in my judgment, to win during the life time of the 

next Congress, not next year, not the year after, not after we 

old gray-haired fellows have gotten off the stage forever, but 

it is going to happen in my lifetime and in yours, and we will 

ride in our splendid automobiles, and will travel around all 

over this country over a splendid system of national 

highways. 

The general session began that afternoon, with Secretary of Agriculture 

David F. Houston addressing "this sturdy band of highwaymen." He 

explained the experimental post road program Congress had approved in 

1912 on a Federal-aid concept as a potential model for permanent Federal 

road legislation. He considered the options for meeting road needs. He 

began with the model favored by AAA and Judge Lowe, among many 

others: 

The suggestion of great national transcontinental roads 

appeals to my imagination, as does the suggestion of 

interstate roads connecting capitals or cities of commercial 

importance to my logical faculty and to the sense of pleasure 

that I experience in riding about the country in my friends' 

automobiles. 

The "essential thing," however, was to provide good roads that get 

products from the community farms to the railroads and "make rural life 

more profitable, comfortable, and pleasurable." 

He recognized that the idea of Federal aid "raises grave questions and 

involves possible dangers." He noted that "complex problems" would have 
to be resolved before many States and communities could handle road 

building funds efficiently: 

There are proposals before the public mind which would 

bankrupt the federal treasury and suggest possible abuses 

before which those of the worst pork-barrel bills of the past 

would pale into insignificance. 

He believed that from a practical standpoint, States would be the "smallest 

unit with which the federal government might deal." Aside from the 

inefficiency of some States in road building, he recognized another 

concern: 

The cry of centralization-that the federal government aims 

unduly to extend its powers, may again be raised. Yet, in a 

field of common interest and of inseparable activities, what 

could be more natural than cooperation and mutual 

assistance? 

Still, he said, "as a practical program, I believe that this matter is one in 

which haste can best be slowly made." Accordingly, he praised Congress 

for establishing a special committee to look into the role of the Federal 

Government in road building. "This indicates a wholesome desire to know 

the facts as well as generous interest." 

On September 30, the morning session was devoted to the prospect of 

Federal legislation. The first speaker was Congressman Shackleford. He 

was now Chairman of the Committee on Roads, which the House had 

established in July 1913. Shackleford acknowledged that the constitutional 

authority of the Federal Government to participate in road building was no 

longer in dispute. Moreover, he acknowledged that "the overwhelming 

majority of the people want Federal road legislation." Unfortunately, he 

said, "they radically differ in opinion as to what such legislation should 

provide." 

He saw two camps, which he designated as the "touring-roads" class and 

the "business-roads" class. He thought that most people favored 

business-class roads, "but they are not here today." He explained: 

They are at home sowing wheat for a harvest from which all 

of us must get our bread. They have neither the time nor the 

money to travel across the continent to attend road 

congresses. 
Advocates of the business-class roads were marshaling their forces 

"under a flag which bears the legend: 'Cheaper transportation and lower 

cost of living.'" 

Advocates of the "touring-roads" class roads were "marching under a 

banner upon which is inscribed in letters of gold: 'See America first.'" They 

were "rich automobile owners, who desire to spend a part of their leisure 

in touring the country." They are supported, he said, by manufacturers of 

road machinery and materials ". . . who regard Uncle Sam as 'good pay,' a 

liberal buyer, and one who would be a valuable customer if only he would 

embark in the business of building 'national roads.'" 

He was concerned about accusations that he was "being antagonistic to 

automobiles and automobile interests." He denied the charge. "I am an 

automobilist myself and a member of an automobile club." 

I do not want to see the number of automobiles in use 

diminish, but rapidly increase. I want to see the whole 

country supplied with a general system of average good 

roads and every farmer replace his horse and buggy with an 

automobile. 

Nevertheless, he devoted most of his speech to a denunciation of 

advocates of "touring roads," who favored Federal construction of national 

roads. Failing that, their second choice was Federal and State cooperation 

in construction of cross country roads. The chief sponsors of such plans 

were AAA and the National Highways Association. Both organizations 

were dominated by men "of the highest character and ability, while the 

National Highways Association was dominated by "gentlemen who are, or 

have been, connected with the manufacture of road machinery and road 

materials." The leaders of both groups "have abundant leisure and 

unlimited resources." With their abundant resources, that have "found the 

fountains of publicity." 

They have even been powerful enough to place before the 

country in an unfavorable light those who have opposed their 

plans. Yet, Mr. President, at the hazard of being called a 

"knight of the dirt roads," or a "pork-barrel Congressman," I 

will avail myself of this opportunity to reason with these 

"touring roads" advocates. 

He then launched into a lengthy critique of the proposals of Charles Henry 

Davis and his National Highways Association, whose members included 

the National Old Trails Road Association and other named trail 

associations. "I hold in my hand a map of the United States showing the 

tentative location of these proposed 50,000 miles of 'national roads.'" 
Aside from criticizing the location of "national roads" in several States, he 

pointed out that Davis estimated they would cost $20,000 a mile. 

Shackleford explained that in a country of 2,250,000 miles of public roads, 

devoting large amounts of funding to 50,000 miles of "national roads" 

would leave 2,200,000 miles of roads unprovided for. He pointed out that 

the people along these "unprovided-for roads" would be taxed to build the 

"national roads." Using the estimate of $20,000 a mile, he estimated that 

the entire road system of 2,250,000 miles would cost $45 billion: 

The human mind is paralyzed in contemplation of such an 

enormous sum. All the nations of the world could scarcely 

raise it. 

Just building the 50,000 miles of "national roads" advocated by Davis 

would cost $1 billion. Considering that the Federal Government would not 

likely authorize more than $25 million a year, Shackleford explained that "it 

would require 40 years to complete the proposed 50,000 miles." By then, 

he said, "most of us will have died and gone to judgment. What we want is 

roads while we live." He considered the whole concept of "national roads" 

to be "a dismal delusion." 

He objected to the bill pending in Congress that would establish a public 

highway commissioner in Washington to determine the location and 

method of construction and maintenance to be employed in "national 

road" building. One of the fundamental errors of the "aristocratic classes" 

is that "there is no official wisdom and capacity except in federal officers." 

By keeping the commissioner's office in Washington, Shackleford said the 

bill would ensure "he may not be influenced nor even impressed by the 

yearnings of the people among whom the roads should radiate." 

The Congressman realized "that I am not in entire harmony with the 

dominant spirit of this great roads congress." He summarized the 

difference: 

You want 50,000 miles of expensive "touring roads" to be 

built in forty years. I want 1,000,000 miles of "business and 

post roads" to be built in five years. 

He appealed to them to "withdraw your opposition to a plain people's 

plan." His "modest" bill had passed the House, but failed in the Senate, 

with AAA claiming credit for the defeat ("How that was accomplished has 

not been revealed"). He called on the delegates to let his plan go forward: 

It will not be expensive, and a vast majority of the people 

favor it. Get out of the way and let us try it out. If it fails, then 

we can take up one of your more ambitious schemes. 
He concluded: Won't you "come over and help us?" 

Convention chairman George Diehl, chairman of AAA's Good Roads 

Bureau, responded in some detail to Congressman Shackleford, 

beginning: 

I know to us motorists, especially the poor ones, like myself, 

it is very pleasing to be put in the plutocratic class . . . . I love 

to close my eyes as he talks and see myself swimming in 

millions and reveling in luxury and 

splendor. 

When the turn came for Congressman 

Borland to address the delegates, he 

said it was fortunate that he did so 

because "it may clear away from your 

minds some misapprehension that we 

have only one idea of roads out there in 

Missouri, and that is Judge Shackleford's 

idea." Borland explained that he did not 

own an automobile "and therefore I am 

not in this plutocratic class," but that in 

his district, more automobiles are owned 

by farmers than any other class of citizens. If he agreed with Shackleford 

that road building is "purely a local enterprise," he would not be at the 

convention: 

If this be purely a local enterprise and amply and thoroughly 

handled by local initiative, then there is no justification for 

federal aid in any form. If the uniformity, efficiency, economy, 

scientific perfection, utilization of advanced ideas of 

construction and maintenance, if, in other words, the 

reduction of things to a business basis, is not necessary, 

then there is no justification for our acting in larger bodies. 

Borland stressed that each part of the country is dependent on the other. 

He had heard people from New York City complain, "Why should the 

nation lay its hands upon the wealth accumulated in the City of New York 

and build roads in Missouri and Montana?" Borland explained: 

And I tell them that the principle is precisely the same, that 

they lay hands upon the wealth of Buffalo and New York City 

to build roads in the interior counties of New York. The 

wealth that is centered in the great, glittering metropolis of 

this wealthy nation of ours, was not produced upon the 

Congressman William Borland
barren streets and squares of the metropolis; it came from 

the rural sections, and the more of it that comes from the 

rural sections, the greater will New York be. 

The experimental Federal-aid post road program, he said, illustrated the 

difficulty. It required the State to contribute two-thirds of the cost, he said, 

and in the end, only a few States were able to participate. (In Missouri, he 

said, the Governor "had the nerve to go contrary to someone's opinion," 

and chose a section of the cross-State highway, but neither the State nor 

Jefferson County was able to match the Federal funds, so the money was 

withdrawn.) 

He spoke of the expertise gathered by Logan Page and the U.S. Office of 

Public Roads "at public expense to put into the hands of the people." He 

added: 

But if you want to build a Chinese wall around your road 

district, let your little road boss find out for himself what are 

the scientific requirements for maintaining permanently and 

efficiently good roads in your neighborhood. We want better 

roads and the only way to get them is to get economy and 

efficiency in the management. 

The American Road Congress, he said, was a meeting of business men. 

"If you believed that your road district was solving the problem, you would 

not be here, not a man of you." If, instead, delegates believe wealth 

accumulating in the cities should be used for "the development of the 

country," then one day, "you will find that the old Stars and Stripes will 

wave from ocean to ocean, over the grandest, best civilization that the 

world has ever seen." 

Judge Lowe addressed the convention again on October 2, during the 

morning Road Users Session. He expressed concern about wearing out 

his welcome, since he had addressed the delegates during the first day 

and was scheduled to speak again the following day. He restated his view 

that if the Federal Government can support railroads and rivers and harbor 

bills, it could, and should, build roads. He acknowledged that some 

Members of Congress take offense at being called "pork barrel 

statesmen." But he contrasted the idea of how much mileage could be 

built by the Federal Government versus putting the same amount of 

money "into the pockets of a lot of road officials for political purposes." 

Now that is it exactly, brother. I am a conservative of the 

conservatives, yet they talk about me being a radical, every 

once in a while. Mr. Shackleford says that in five years he 

proposes to build a million miles of road with the national 
revenues. What does that mean? At $10,000 a mile, that 

means an appropriation of $10,000,000,000 in five years, 

$2,000,000,000 annually. That means, if it means anything, 

absolute national bankruptcy. Why, there is not a 

government on earth that could stand such a scheme. Now, 

that is enough to say about that; I dismiss him and dismiss 

his idea and consign him, together with the Congressmen 

who stand by him-and I know most of them-to that oblivion 

which he has so richly merited. 

He told the delegates that he had stopped using the term national aid or 

Federal aid because it was "the most wretchedly misleading proposition 

under the shining sun." He explained: 

Now let us stop talking about national aid and let us go to the 

government and say, "Build a system of national highways 

and maintain such system." That is the correct doctrine. 

The following day, during the final session of the American Road 

Congress, Judge Lowe was called on for a few final remarks. It was a brief 

talk, in which he said, in part: 

I do not know when I first began attending road conventions, 

but I have never attended a road convention that impressed 

me with its intelligence, its deep and abiding earnestness 

and its all round intelligence as this convention has done. I 

believe it is the greatest road convention ever held in this 

country. I will except Europe and the foreign countries 

because I have not had the pleasure . . . of attending 

conventions in those countries, but this convention has 

certainly set the pace, and I cannot, for the life of me, 

imagine how it is going to be possible for the next Congress 

to avoid taking a definite position on the question of national 

roads. 

The American Road Congress adopted several resolutions, including the 

following: 

That the American Road Congress earnestly favors the 

creation of a national department of public works, directed by 

a secretary, who should be a member of the President's 

cabinet. 

That the American Road Congress favors State highway 

commissions and State aid for the construction and 

maintenance of the main roads of the several States. 
That the American Road Congress favors the establishment 

of a national road system, and favors the construction by the 

States, counties, and towns of the lateral and connecting 

market highways. 

That the American Road Congress commends the Lincoln 

Highway Association for its efforts in seeking the 

establishment by popular subscription of a transcontinental 

highway as an enduring and useful memorial to Abraham 

Lincoln, and further commends the National Old Trails 

Association for its splendid work in the rebuilding of the 

Cumberland Road and the Santa Fe Trail. 

Before The Good Roads Committee 

In January 1914, Judge Lowe testified before the House Committee on 

Roads. Following his testimony, he submitted a formal statement 

summarizing his views. He began: 

As "Federal Aid" in some form is being agitated as 

preferable to a System of National Highways, permit me to 

ask why make the States contribute an equal amount or any 

other amount as a condition precedent to any action by the 

General Government? 

Why make the State contribute to a National enterprise at 

all? 

If a road is not of National concern, ought the National 

revenues to be appropriated for it? 

If it is of National concern, ought the State to contribute? 

He commented on the fear among Federal-aid advocates that automobile 

"joy riders" would use "Cross Country Roads, "Tourists' roads," and 

"Ocean to Ocean Highways." 

The roads most in favor by these critics are "the rural roads," 

the roads in the back districts, in remote sections, where 

there are no products to market and no people to use them, 

either for "joy" or necessity-roads that "begin nowhere and 

end nowhere"-roads of little local value, and no general 

value, these are the roads to which it is proposed by some 

that the general revenue be applied. 
He summarized the legislative history of the Cumberland Road to 

demonstrate that previous great leaders "stood for a System of National 

Highways." He believed that joint authority over a National Highway, or 

any highway, was "illogical and impracticable." Either the State or the 

General Government, he said, must be supreme. "If each is supreme over 

its own system, and only over its own system, there will be no friction, no 

departure from the uniform practice of the Government, no questions of 

State right, nor of Paternal nor concentrated Federal Power, no conflict of 

authority, no dodging of responsibility." 

Judge Lowe and his associates were making similar arguments around 

the country as Congress considered the role of the Federal Government in 

road building. For example, he had written an open letter to Governor 

Elliott W. Major of Missouri in December 1913. If $50 million were 

appropriated annually and distributed equally among the States, and if 

Missouri distributed its share equally to every county, "she could build 

about four-fifths of a mile of hard surfaced road in each county." Judge 

Lowe then explained what would happen if Congress appropriated $50 

million a year for 6 years for a System of National Highways. It would, he 

said, build 30,000 miles at an average cost of $10,000 per mile. "This 

system could be made to furnish an average of two trunk lines across 

each state and across the continent, and all connected with the national 

capital." 

On February 20, 1914, The Needles Eye reported on a visit to Barstow by 

J. H. Miner of Kansas City, Missouri, on behalf of the National Old Trails 

Road Association and the National Highways Association. Miner explained 

the two associations' opposition to the Shackleford bill to distribute $25 

million to the States. "Under this plan," the article explained, "the wealthier 

and most populous states would receive the most of this fund, on account 

of their being able to appropriate state funds for roads, as the bill 

requires." The article also reported Miner's comments about road issues of 

local interest: 

He stated the Grand Canyon-Needles-National Highway is 

now a good road, and that he and Supervisor Butler came 

from Needles to Barstow in 9 hours-170 miles-including 

stopping for supplies, lunch, etc. This could not be done if 

the road was not first-class. The Borderland route could not, 

he said, compare with our road. The Lincoln Highway 

Association, he claimed, is a $10,000,000 corporation of 

Detroit, and is not a national highway. 

Miner's business concluded with his explanation that for Judge Lowe and 

others to continue to promote the area's road interests before Congress, 
financial assistance was needed immediately. "For this purpose 

contributions of $2.50 were given by each of 14 citizens of Barstow." 

N.O.T. & The PPOO 

On March 18, 1914, a new transcontinental highway association was 

organized during a meeting in St. Joseph, Missouri. The Pikes Peak 

Ocean to Ocean Highway (PPOO) Association was dedicated to 

promoting improvement and use of a road from New York City to San 

Francisco, the same termini as the Lincoln Highway. An account in the 

May 1914 issue of Better Roads and Streets (as the magazine was now 

called) explained the new highway: 

"The Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway" is the latest 

development in the transcontinental route situation. The new 

highway was launched at a meeting in St. Joseph, Mo., on 

March 18, by the federation and alliance of State and 

interstate associations already in existence. 

The course of the Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway is 

from New York through Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, 

Cumberland, Wheeling, Columbus, Dayton, Indianapolis, 

Springfield, Ill., Hannibal, Mo., St. Joseph, Belleville, Kans., 

Colorado Springs, Glenwood Springs, Salt Lake City, Reno, 

Sacramento and Oakland to San Francisco. 

To create the route west of Illinois, the national association affiliated with 

State trail associations, including the Lincoln Highway Association of 

Colorado, a State association that predated the Lincoln Highway 

Association. Pending a location tour, the association announced it would 

follow the Lincoln Highway west of Salt Lake City. East of Illinois, the 

association had worked out a cooperative arrangement with the National 

Old Trails Road Association to share its route to Washington and New 

York. 

The PPOO association claimed that its route was "the central and most 

direct across the country." However, the leaders were concerned about 

sharing the eastern portion of their route with the National Old Trails Road. 

The process of ending the linkage began during the association's annual 

meeting in St. Joseph on February 2, 1916. A committee was named to 

represent the association in negotiations with possible State partners east 

of Illinois. On February 15, a conference was held in Indianapolis to 

pursue the goal. The March 1916 issue of The Road-Maker described the 

results: 
Through adoption of an independent alignment from 

Indianapolis east to the Atlantic Ocean, the Pike's Peak 

Ocean to Ocean Highway Association has forged another 

link in its great transcontinental highway. At a conference of 

its committee on eastern extension, held at Indianapolis on 

February 15th, decision was reached in favor of a route 

extending from Indianapolis through Richmond, Indiana; 

Eaton, Dayton, Springfield and Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh, 

Blairsville, Johnstown, Altoona, Huntington, Harrisburg, 

Lebanon, Reading, Pottstown to Philadelphia; with a 

connecting branch from Harrisburg to Washington, D.C., and 

another from Reading, Pa., to New York City. The selection 

of this route is subject to early organization and affiliation of 

state divisions in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and active steps 

have already been taken looking to meetings for this 

purpose during the month of March . . . . 

The routing change was confirmed during a meeting on March 10, 1916, 

ending the relationship with the National Old Trails Road. For more 

information on the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, see 

www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/pikes.htm 

Judge Lowe Called A Polecat 

As reflected by Representative Shackleford's comments during the 

American Road Congress in Detroit, he was frustrated by the opposition 

by good roads interests to his proposal. In February 1914, his frustration 

boiled over on the floor of the House of Representatives. 

His modified ABC Rental bill had passed the House by a vote of 284 to 12 

on February 10, 1914; now it would go to the Senate, which had rejected 

his bill in 1912. Almost immediately after the 1914 vote in the House, he 

saw a flood of editorials against the bill in newspapers around the country. 

On February 24, 1914, shortly after the House began business at noon, 

Shackleford rose to "a question of personal privilege affecting my rights, 

reputation, and conduct as a Member individually." He was upset by an 

editorial in the February 10 issue of the Philadelphia Public Ledger titled 

"Let Public Opinion Smash Pork-Barrel Politics." The phrase he 

particularly objected to was: "The danger is imminent. Once this graft has 

started it can not be stopped." 

He countered that not one single Member of Congress supported the bill 

"through any motive of graft." 

Mr. Speaker, there are two things without which civilization, 

even in its crudest form, could not exist. They are the public 
roads and the public press. Both of these are all the better if 

they are kept free from mud. Dirt roads should be kept 

compacted and firm by the frequent use of the split-log drag. 

Newspaper editorials should be kept free from slime by the 

constant use of the fair play drag. 

He knew that "this endless chain of malevolent editorials" did not occur by 

accident. They "all came from the same editorial canning factory." He 

explained: 

Mr. Speaker, look at these editorials. Here is one headed 

"Another pork barrel." Here is another, which says: "It is 

distinctly a bad bill, the effect of which would be first to 

plunge the good-road movement head over heels into 

Federal pork barrel." Here is another: "Think what an 

entering wedge and scandal that pork barrel road bill would 

be." Here is another: "Judge Lowe is warning all supporters 

of the good-road movement throughout the length of the 

proposed old-trails route to help defeat the pork barrel" . . . . 

The distinctive feature of all these editorials is the words 

"pork barrel." 

If one comes across a quadruped and wants to know to what 

particular species it belongs, there are certain distinctive 

features which will point him to a correct solution. If a 

naturalist should go afield and discover a little animal under 

a hedge and he looked at it and was in doubt what it was, he 

would approach it closely. He would notice it had a nose; so 

had a horse. He would discover that it had two eyes; so had 

a cow. He would discover that it had a tail; so had a dog. He 

would discover that it had teeth; so has a wolf. Approaching 

nearer still, he would suddenly discover the air filled with a 

fog which would penetrate his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his 

ears. From the distinctive odor of that fog he would 

instinctively discover the particular family to which the animal 

belonged . . . . 

Shackleford was referring to a "polecat," a term he used during his speech 

but excised when given the opportunity to edit his remarks for the 

Congressional Record. A "polecat" is defined as "any of various North 

American skunks." 

He wanted his colleagues to understand which "canning factories" had 

come up with the word "pork-barrel," slipped their label on it, and shipped 

it off to the newspapers: 
There are in this country a number of road associations 

made up of men of great wealth who have special interests 

that they want to promote, and they have undertaken to 

shape all road legislation that is adopted here or in the 

States. I shall not undertake to enumerate all of these road 

associations. I can now recall the National Highways 

Association, the National Road Builders' Association, and a 

number of others of that character. 

They were, he said, made up of individuals and companies that would 

benefit from big road construction projects. But he particularly wanted to 

denounce AAA because its "ramifications extend into every nook and 

corner of the great Republic." AAA was opposed "to expending any money 

on roads within a State, because if the money is frittered away on these 

community roads-these farm roads-there will not be funds enough left with 

which to build the peacock lanes upon which they have their hearts set." 

Shackleford cited resolutions adopted by AAA during its national assembly 

in Chicago the previous December. He quoted George Diehl saying "the 

association is on record as being opposed to any Federal aid for 'pork 

barrel' propositions." Shackleford asked: 

Mr. Philadelphia Ledger, where did you get your term "pork 

barrel"? Was it not from the editorial canning factory of the 

American Automobile Association? [Applause] 

To illustrate the insolence of the AAA, he entered a letter into the record. 

He explained that the Automobile Club of St. Louis had endorsed his 

previous bill. After he reintroduced it in modified form, H. D. Train, vice 

president of AAA, wrote to the St. Louis chapter on September 3, 1913: 

This bill, as you probably know, carries with it an 

appropriation of $15 per mile for dirt roads through the rural 

free-delivery districts of the United States. We consider this 

bill the biggest joke ever introduced into Congress. The 

American Automobile Association, through its influence, beat 

this bill once in the Senate after it had been passed by the 

House. 

Mr. Shackleford has shown throughout his course to be 

antagonistic to the automobilist and to automobile interests 

both in this State and in the United States. The probabilities 

are that he will continue to create trouble as his mental 

make-up leads him altogether in that direction. I consider Mr. 

Shackleford a joke and we look for him to be retired in the 

district in the coming election . . . . The American Automobile 
Association, of which you are a member, is doing everything 

in its power to beat this man for the coming term. 

Shackleford did not know how AAA would go about trying to prevent his 

reelection, but he considered it an outrage that the organization can put 

"their hands down into their treasury and fill the papers of my district and 

my State with canned editorials against me." He did not think he would be 

defeated, but he wanted to call attention to "the nefarious methods that 

are being resorted to in order to defeat legislation in which all of the 

people are interested." Again, the Congressional Record inserted: 

"[Applause.]" He warned his colleagues that each of them, the "knights of 

the dirt roads," could be subjected to the same treatment. 

Next he turned to the National Highways Association, another of the road 

associations whose members "want to try out the automobiles from New 

York to San Francisco in order to see which one can win the race. They 

want a road that is adapted to their purposes, and they want the farmer 

down on the muddy roads in my district and yours to pay the expenses of 

this peacock lane over which these peacocks shall strut in luxurious 

automobiles. [Applause.]" 

He made fun of the association by explaining its membership policy. At the 

top, he said, are the founding members who contribute $25,000. The 

association also has national members ($10,000), collective members 

($2,500), life members ($1,000), and the sustaining member: 

We are getting down now, Mr. Speaker, into the pond where 

the suckers swim. [Laughter.] A sustaining member pays 

$100 . . . . Then, coming on down to smaller suckers, they 

have contributing members, who pay $10 each, and then 

they have assisting members, who pay $5 apiece. Lastly, in 

order that no man, however humble, shall be permitted to 

escape this dragnet for funds relied upon to prosecute this 

propaganda for the rich and special interests, they have a 

subscribing membership for a dollar apiece. And then, in 

order to get the other fellow who has a little vanity in him, 

they have what they call an "associate membership," who 

gets down to 50 cents apiece. [Laughter.] They have spread 

this net out all over this country, taking in every man, from 

the fellow willing to pay $25,000 for a founder's membership 

down to the man who pays 50 cents in order that he may 

wear upon the lapel of his coat the badge of an apostleship 

in the peacock-lane propaganda. [Laughter.] 

That brought him to his own State. 
There is the Old Trails Association, hibernating up in the 

district of my brother, the gentleman from Kansas City [Mr. 

Borland]. [Laughter.] It is powerful. If it lived in my district I 

would be afraid of it. [Renewed laughter.] The head of that 

institution is one J. M. Lowe. 

Now let us get down to him-this Old Trails man. What does 

he do? When he needs money to carry on his editorial 

canning factory he takes a United States map and a piece of 

red chalk and marks an old-trails highway across some State 

and then goes to the people in the towns along that line and 

collects dues. His association is a branch of the same 

association whose organization I read to you a while ago. 

I see where he went down into the district of my good friend 

the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Wingo]. He went into Fort 

Smith. He was getting hard pressed because this bill had 

passed the House. He wants to defeat it in the Senate. He 

wants to bring up public sentiment enough to scare the 

Senators, so that they will run away from it and avoid being 

personally attacked as "pork-barrel statesmen." In order to 

accomplish this he must have more money. He went down 

into my brother Wingo's district, as I say, and marked off a 

red line on the map and extended it through a number of 

those towns, among others Fort Smith. He called the 

credulous of Fort Smith together [laughter] to organize an old 

trails association. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have no complaint 

against my friend Borland who introduced the bill, whose 

caption I now read: 

A bill to provide a national ocean-to-ocean 

highway over the pioneer trails of the Nation, 

thus making a continuous trunk-line macadam 

road from the site of Jamestown, Va., and from 

the City of New York, N.Y., to the city of 

Washington, D.C., thence by way of St. Louis, 

Mo., to Gardner, Kans., and there to branch, 

one branch leading through Santa Fe, N. Mex., 

the other branch from Gardner, Kans., through 

Kearney, Nebr., to Olympia, Wash., also to aid 

the States through which the highway herein 

described on the national old trails road shall 

run in extending, constructing, rebuilding and 

repairing same. 
This is the bill that Judge Lowe wants. Mr. Borland 

introduced it. Judge Lowe is seeking to build a peacock lane 

that is going to put out of commission the transcontinental 

railroads that go between New York and San Francisco, if 

you believe what he will tell you. [Laughter.] Here is a letter 

published in multiform, sent to every newspaper through the 

country, from Washington to San Francisco: 

The National Old Trails Association, 

Kansas City, Mo., February 14, 1914 

Mr. _______, 

__________, Mo. 

My Dear Mr. ______, I am sending you 

herewith extracts from the Kansas City Journal 

(Republican), the Kansas City Star 

(Progressive), and the Independence (Mo.) 

Examiner (Democratic), along with the National 

Highways Association Bulletin, as ideas upon 

which to base an editorial expression of your 

own, if you have the time and space. 

The National Old Trails Association needs your 

support at once in the fight, which is to benefit 

your community on the floor of the United 

States Senate. It is needless to add that we 

beg of you your best effort, for it will be read in 

the Senate, together with the name of your 

paper and your own name and politics. What 

you say now will do more than the rantings of 

any legislator at Washington to hasten the day 

when your city will be linked with a rock road to 

the rest of the United States. 

Can you mail us a copy of your paper, 

accompanied by a short personal letter stating 

your desires in the good-roads movement, your 

politics, and a little data concerning your public 

service in your community, length of residence 

there, etc.? Tell us whether or not you, 

together with the citizens of your city, would be 

glad to be a link in the national-highway chain. 
Hoping that this is not asking too much, 

Yours truly,

J. M. Lowe

The newspapers out in my country, like the Congressmen, 

are not rich. They have nothing to sell but their space. 

[Laughter.] If this old trails hero is asking all of these 

newspapers to put up free hundreds of square feet of space 

in order to push his propaganda, then all I have got to say for 

him is that he is a little stingy in his disposition. He has got 

the money. Why does he not pay these people for the space 

he uses, if he does not. 

As he moved toward the end of his speech, Shackleford wondered why 

his bill was called a "pork-barrel bill" when it was intended for the entire 

country: 

Why? Because everybody had a piece of pork in the barrel, I 

suppose. It is subject to that criticism. There is not a man, 

woman, or child in the United States who would not be 

benefited by the enactment of that law. 

Civilization, he said, depended on roads. "Civilization should exist along 

every roadway and every lane in this country, and not be confined to the 

few chains of peacock lanes that these people have in mind." He 

estimated that creating these peacock lanes would cost $45 billion. 

He wanted to help the farmer because "nine-tenths of all the commerce of 

this country is hauled to market over dirt roads." The big cities that are 

complaining about his "pork-barrel bill" didn't complain about the "pork 

barrel" when "we dropped $14,000,000 into the harbors of the State of 

New York in one year, paid in part by the farmers of my district." They also 

helped pay for harbor improvements on the coast so other countries could 

ship farm products to the United States in competition with American 

farmers. Now, the advocates of peacock lanes are saying to the farmers, 

"the Federal Government is going to leave you alone in peace, in the mud 

where you now are, to stay in the mud or dig out for yourselves, as may 

seem best to you." 

Shackleford indicated that those opposed to the bill were trying to bluff the 

Senate into thinking that President Woodrow Wilson would veto the bill. If, 

Shackleford said, the President intended to do so, he would have informed 

the Congress before he told "the proprietors of the editorial canning 

factory." He pointed out that the 1912 National Democratic Platform, 
adopted in Baltimore as the party nominated Woodrow Wilson for the 

Presidency, stated: "We favor National Aid to State and local authorities in 

the construction and maintenance of Post Roads." Representative 

Shackleford assured his colleagues that, "as a great leader, one of the 

greatest this country has ever seen, we may confidently rely upon 

[President Wilson] to lead on to victory in behalf of the people for whom I 

am now speaking. [Applause.]" 

He then referred to one of the Nation's pressing social issues, namely how 

to keep "the boys and girls from leaving the farm." Conferences of bankers 

and professors were being held on the issue, but Shackleford said it could 

be done by making "farm life tolerable; treat the farmer as though he was 

an American citizen. [Applause.]" 

Perhaps, he speculated, he was wrong. Perhaps the farmers should be 

taxed to build these peacock lanes. If so, "then put it through on its merits; 

let these big road associations get out of the field; let Congress legislate 

with freedom; let Judge Lowe stop his canning factory of sinister editorials; 

let the representatives of the American people legislate upon the merits of 

the proposition." 

He concluded: 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I regret that circumstances have called 

for just such a speech as I have made. This ought to have 

been said on behalf of every Member who voted for the bill. 

It is an outrage that the public press should hold up to the 

public as grafters every man who votes against special 

legislation that a lot of these special interests want to put 

across. Somebody ought to have said it, and I have said it. 

Will Harry Train get my scalp for this? What if he does? 

Many soldiers have died on the battlefield before. [Loud 

Applause.] 

On March 3, 1914, Representative Borland rose on the floor of the House 

to respond to Representative Shackleford's personal privilege speech. 

Borland said that after hearing the speech, he had prepared a resolution 

calling for a special committee of Congress to investigate the charges he 

had heard of organizations using influence, by intimidation or otherwise, 

on the roads bill. But then he saw the Congressional Record version of the 

speech: 

I find that some of the positive statements have been 

omitted. I can not find the word "lobby" anywhere in the 

printed speech, and there are a great many other portions of 
the speech as made on the floor of the House which I do not 

find in the Record. Some of the most offensive matter has 

been omitted. Doubtless this is to my colleague's credit, and 

I sincerely trust that both his natural life and his political life 

will be long enough for him to regret sincerely his entire 

speech. 

The Shackleford bill, Borland said, had been a great disappointment to 

thousands of friends of good roads. Although Shackleford had no doubt 

been "stung by the criticism he has received," Borland doubted the 

wisdom of "an attack on the character of private citizens." After quoting 

some of "the most offensive portions of the speech still remaining in the 

printed version," he clarified the term "pork barrel," by saying: 

The evil of a pork barrel is that it is cleverly designed to aid 

in the reelection of the sitting Member by the expenditure of 

public money. The money is distributed in such a way as to 

produce the largest political effect. 

The press, he said, has a high duty "to turn the light of pitiless publicity 

upon the expenditures of public money." Even the "humblest citizen" can 

criticize public men and measures. But if a corrupt lobby exists, "both this 

House and the courts are clothed with ample power to punish it." 

Borland then turned to the term "peacock boulevards" that had caused his 

colleague to take "great offense." He said: 

If we disregard the epithet and get down to what he really 

means, the logic of his position is that he is assailing any 

form of improved highways which lead from city to city or 

town to town, or which cross an entire State or run into two 

or more States. It so happens that the present strength and 

success of the good roads movement is very largely due to 

business men all over the country who are advocating just 

exactly this type of road. 

The men, he said, were expending considerable time and effort, but very 

few of them "have anything to gain personally in the matter." As an 

example, he cited the National Old Trails Road Association, which his 

colleague "denounces and which he compares to the odoriferous 

quadruped," and the Missouri Old Trails Road Association, still headed by 

Walter Williams. He listed several other Missouri-based associations, but 

noted that every State has a dozen or more such groups: 

Most of the members of these associations are business 

men of the highest type and the most unselfish patriotism. It 
may be possible that they are mistaken in their views, but it 

is not possible that they belong to the tribe of quadrupeds 

indicated by my colleague, or that they are engaged in any 

corrupt attempts to influence the press or Congress. 

Representative Wilson of Florida asked Borland if the criticism had been 

directed at the associations or their methods of propaganda. Borland 

replied that the criticism was directed at "the character of the roads and 

the methods of the associations." He referred to the term "peacock lanes" 

as the "particular hit of the speech." In fact, said Borland, in view of the 

"hostility" displayed by Representative Shackleford to this type of road, he 

had made it "impractical in this bill for the Government to aid in their 

construction." Borland believed that the Federal and State governments 

should help with all classes of road, but he did not want to repeat 

arguments he had made in previous debates: 

But I am opposed to wasting road money on politics, and I 

am opposed to making campaign matter by denouncing men 

who are working for any class of good roads . . . . [However,] 

it seems to me unexplainable that the only Member of 

Congress, so far as I know, who belongs to any of these 

"peacock boulevard" associations is my colleague 

[Shackleford], the chairman of the Roads Committee. He is a 

member of the only highway association from ocean to 

ocean supported by automobile manufacturers, the one 

which runs through Chicago, Omaha and Denver. 

Although the Lincoln Highway did not go through Denver (except via a 

branch road), Borland was referring to the Lincoln Highway Association, 

which was backed by Carl Fisher and his automotive industry associates: 

I know of no distinction between this association to which my 

colleague belongs and the National Old Trails Road 

Association, except that the old trails route is through 

Missouri, while the other route is through other States, and 

the National Old Trails Road Association has not the official 

backing of the automobile manufacturers, while the 

association to which my colleague belongs has. If my 

colleague really believes that these people belong to the 

class of quadrupeds to which he has referred, I am surprised 

to find him in their company, unless he is there purely as a 

naturalist. 

Large numbers of people, some of whom have a "selfish and business 

interest," had generated interest in good roads: 
When a movement approaches success it is hardly possible 

to prevent ambitious politicians from jumping astride of it and 

riding it to victory or death, as the case may be; but why the 

people who furnish the steed must also be kicked in the face 

is more than I can understand. 

If Shackleford believed that "a dangerous and corrupt lobby was at work," 

he could have called for an investigation, but he did not do so. Borland 

doubted the propriety of assailing the motives of private citizens who are 

unable to defend themselves on the floor of the House. He would speak 

for them, beginning with Judge Lowe: 

Judge J. M. Lowe, president of the National Old Trails Road 

Association, is a true and tried Democrat who has been 

prominent in affairs in Missouri for many years. He was 

prosecuting attorney of Clinton County during his young 

manhood, and more recently he was election commissioner 

of Kansas City by appointment of Governor Folk. I am 

astonished to think that my colleague has intimated that 

Judge Lowe is engaged in buying or attempting to buy either 

newspapers or Congressmen, or, in fact, that there are in 

Missouri either newspapers or Congressmen for sale . . . . 

The fact is that Judge Lowe is a man of very modest means 

but large public spirit. He has given freely of his time and 

work and I have no doubt also of his means in devotion to 

what he believes to be a patriotic duty. His letter referred to 

by my colleague shows that he is asking friends to assist him 

in this work and entirely [negates] the idea that any pay is 

offered or expected. 

In addition, Borland ridiculed Shackleford for having the public printer 

make 36,000 copies of the "polecat" speech for distribution under his free 

mailing frank: 

Of course, the circulation of these 36,000 copies will prove 

conclusively that the Shackleford bill is a good bill and in the 

interest of the farmers; that the opponents to it are divided 

into zoological groups of polecats, peacocks, and suckers; 

that the peacocks are not only found associating with such 

strange friends but have taught the polecat and suckers to 

"strut" like themselves; that the press of Missouri is poor and 

has nothing to sell but its space, and that good-roads 

associations should be put out of business. Well, after all, 

the 36,000 copies tell the tale without any words of mine. 

[Applause.] 
When Borland concluded, Shackleford requested time to respond to his 

colleague's "somewhat caustic arraignment." He acknowledged and 

repeated his claim that "some of the big road associations and special 

interests" have been lobbying in support of "ocean-to-ocean highways." 

He said he had not used the word "corrupt," as Borland had suggested, 

but believed that a powerful lobby was being maintained in opposition to 

the Shackleford Bill. 

He responded to Borland's defense of "my alleged attack" on Judge Lowe: 

Now, what about him? He is a man, so far as I know, of 

unsullied reputation. He possesses great enthusiasm and 

firmness of purpose. He is obsessed with the idea of having 

the Federal Government build some peacock lanes to 

connect up the antipodal oceans. He has devoted himself to 

chasing this jack-o'-lantern. In his dreams he sees the old 

Cumberland Road, the old national trails, as they were in the 

days of long ago. In his waking hours he yearns for a 

restoration of these old ways of travel over which our 

forefathers drove their ox teams. He thinks that if these 

conditions were restored the crack of the ox driver's whip 

would drown the sounds of the clanging bell and the 

screeching whistle of the speeding locomotive. To bring all of 

this about he has been through the years conducting one of 

the most persistent lobbies that has ever existed in 

connection with legislation here. Just now he is procuring 

editorials to be inserted in every newspaper whose columns 

he can enter. For what purpose let him answer. Here is what 

he says in his letter to the editors: "It is needless to add that 

we beg of you your best efforts, for it will be read in the 

Senate, together with the name of your paper and your own 

name and politics." All of this, of course, has for its object the 

influencing of the votes of Members of Congress. 

To get all of this stuff to the newspapers takes money. To 

get it back, takes money. To get it to Washington to be read 

on the floor of the Senate takes money. To travel about year 

in and year out to work up sentiment along the old trails 

takes money. He gets the money and spends it. What for? 

To influence Congress to kill a road bill which would extend 

a system of good roads among the farmers and to secure 

legislation for a construction of old trails of which he is so 

much enamored. He is president of the Old Trails 

Association. He directs its movements. This association 

collects and spends every year large sums of money. Not a 

dollar of it has ever gone to build a rod of road. 
Now let me say again that I do not charge that Judge Lowe 

has been guilty of corrupt lobbying. I do charge, however, 

that he is expending large sums of money trying to influence 

legislation on the road subject. 

Shackleford concluded by saying that "no lobby in recent years has spent 

more money in trying to move Congress and the country into the support 

of a measure than has been put into the fight for peacock lanes and 

against roads connecting the farms with the towns and railway stations." 

At every road convention, he said, the lobby is there to promote their 

resolutions. If a State legislature is in session, the lobby is there. If a road 

magazine is published, the lobby is on hand "to get behind it and subsidize 

it." 

And when the road question gets to Washington this lobby is 

here, with its headquarters open under the management of 

talented men to keep in close touch with Congress to wield 

its influence. Mr. Chairman, they want ocean-to-ocean 

highways for automobile tourists at public expense and they 

are not willing that a dollar shall be spent upon any system 

of roads leading from the farms to the markets. The tourist 

has his lobby here. Who is here to lobby for the farmer and 

the consumer of farm products? Nobody. They elected us to 

guard their interest, and we will be unfaithful to our trust if we 

fail to do it. 

He observed that despite differences on the road bill, he and 

Representative Borland were close friends. In fact, they had talked earlier 

that day: 

I gathered from my conversation with him that he, too, is in 

favor of a system of community roads connecting the farms 

with the towns and market places; that his opposition to my 

bill is more upon administrative features than upon the real 

principle involved in it. I have no doubt that ultimately he and 

I will be found supporting the same measure. 

With that, the House went on to other issues related to the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture's annual appropriations act. 

Judge Lowe Responds to the Peacock Lane and Polecat Speech 

The April 1914 issue of Better Roads and Streets contained Judge Lowe's 

response to the "peacock lane and pole cat speech." He was not backing 

down. He explained that: 
The great advocate of a national chain of rock or macadam 

highways from the very beginning of the present movement 

has been the farmer; the natural enemy, the politician, who 

is striving to make road appropriations a 'pork barrel' to 

increase his prestige among his constituency. 

After quoting the polecat portion of Shackleford's speech, Judge Lowe 

said: 

This was the famous "peacock lane and pole cat" speech 

and the Congressman's attack was so bitter as apparently to 

justify the belief that his position is unalterably against the 

roads that lead from one town to another, across the State, 

or through several States. 

The truth is, that the good-roads movement, now 

approaching success, is the direct result of the selfsacrificing work of business men and associations promoting 

precisely this kind of roads. In every city in the country there 

are from one to a dozen of these organizations promoting 

highways from one hundred to one thousand miles in length. 

The officers and members are among the most responsible 

business men of the community, and far from being "pole 

cats and lobbyists," as openly claimed by Judge 

Shackleford. These public-minded citizens have lent their 

money, time, and brains to the movement, but unfortunately, 

there is nothing to prevent any ambitious politician, like the 

father of the notorious "Pork Barrel Bill," from jumping astride 

and riding their well-intended schemes to victory, or to death, 

as the case may be. 

But, as Congressman Borland pointed out in his reply to 

Judge Shackleford, there ought to be some rule of fair 

sportsmanship against the rider kicking in the face the men 

who furnished him the steed. Without the city and small town 

good-roads boosters, there would have been no good-roads 

movement of importance, and the judge would not be 

chairman of a committee investigating the merits of the 

project. 

Moreover, there is nothing about the so-called "Peacock 

Boulevards" to suggest joy-riding, as declared by Judge 

Shackleford. That pastime of rich men's sons, everybody 

knows, is not a transcontinental or town-to-town sport, but is 

most perniciously conducted on suburban roads and city 

parkways. 
In Judge Lowe's opinion, the present Shackleford bill was even worse than 

the previous bill. It is "cunningly revised" to appeal to farmers, and 

especially those who do not live near cross-State or principal market 

roads: 

So insidious is this appeal that the unthinking or uninformed 

may say, "There, at least, is a chance to get something for 

nothing; "Shack" has knocked off the top of Uncle Sam's 

barrel." Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

Before the farmer even gets a "look in" into this barrel, under 

this A.B.C. class, he is required to build his road first, and 

then match dollars with Uncle Sam for its maintenance. For 

every dollar appropriated by the Government of the people's 

own money for building roads, the people must be taxed 

again to raise an equal amount. And this is true both as to 

money to be given over to road overseers . . . for repair 

work, as well as for road construction. 

The men and road organizations so virulently and wantonly 

assailed by Shackleford on the floor of the House, men who 

have given this [sic] time and money to the cause of good 

roads, who have devoted their lives to this great work, offer 

no such scheme as this. Their purpose is to apply the money 

already paid into the treasury to building and maintaining 

roads, without raising one dollar by additional taxation. Do 

you see the difference? 

Judge Lowe concluded by referring to a man in Mississippi who liked to be 

called "Old Reliable," even though he was "utterly unreliable." Similarly, 

the Congressman called himself "Old Shack," and "seems to leave the 

impression that others call him that seriously." Judge Lowe explained: 

This is in keeping with his criticism of "Peacock Boulevards, 

built for joy-riding automobilists," while the fact is, he is a 

member of the only organization having for its purpose the 

building of just such a "Peacock Boulevard," as he 

describes, but which he carefully and significantly refrained 

from mentioning in his pole-cat speech, to-wit, the so-called 

Lincoln Highway. "Friend of the Farmer?" "Old Shack-Old 

Reliable?" 

At the end of Judge Lowe's defense, Better Roads and Streets published 

one of his editorials under the title "Looks Like Quick Money! Is It?" If, he 

said, the Shackleford Road Bill is "a serious and honest attempt to do the 

best thing," and if the States could accept the money (22 had 
constitutional limitations on doing so, he said), and it was fair and just to 

tax the people of cities even though none of the funds would be spent in 

cities, the funds would be spent on less than one half of the public roads. 

He explained the consequences as he understood them: 

One hundred and twenty dollars per mile goes to the repair 

of macadam roads; sixty dollars per mile goes to the repair 

of gravel roads; and thirty dollars per mile goes to the repair 

of mud roads, the average being fifty dollars per mile, and it 

is safe to assume that the road overseers will maintain this 

average expenditure. As the benefits apply to the 1,042,477 

miles of post rural free delivery roads, the annual repair 

account will be, if the average is maintained, $52,123,850, or 

$2,123.850 deficit. 

If this allotment were eliminated in the Senate, and the full appropriation 

applied to making permanent, hard-surfaced post roads at an average 

cost of $10,000 per mile, "it will take 208 years to construct them, saying 

nothing about maintenance, and the [sic] cost ten and one-half billion 

dollars ($10,424,770,000): 

It is evident, therefore, that both of these plans for "national 

aid" are absurd, and will hinder rather than help road 

construction. 

He advocated building one or two roads at a time "and keeping it up" 

(quoting Senator John Sharpe Williams of Mississippi). A single 

transcontinental road could be built for $25 million a year. The States and 

counties can then focus on the other 98 percent of roads. 

The idea that the National Highway would be an "automobile road" is, 

Judge Lowe said, "too ridiculous to demand a serious reply." Tourists 

would enjoy such roads, "but the farmer would be the chief beneficiary." 

He concluded: 

Why is a road, or system of roads, built and maintained by 

the Government without additional taxation, "peacock 

boulevard for auto tourists," while roads built under the 

provisions of this bill by doubling the taxes, "good roads from 

farms to markets"? 

Do you favor the double system of taxation, as provided for 

in the Shackleford bill, or do you stand with us for national 

highways, to be built and maintained out of the revenues 

already paid? 
Judge Lowe also commented on the "peacock lane and pole cat speech" 

during his address to the third annual convention of the National Old Trails 

Road Association. It was held on May 7 and 8, 1914, in Indianapolis. 

Judge Lowe explained the constitutional basis for Federal road 

appropriations. He also discussed the importance of interstate roads. 

Then he commented: 

We are free from any entangling alliance with any special 

interest of any character whatsoever. No manufacturer of 

road vehicles, road machinery or road material has 

contributed one dollar to our support. The delegates to this 

convention are here at their own expense. The membership 

extending across the continent are a patriotic, public-spirited 

body of men and women seeking by donating their time and 

money to their cause, to do what they can to further the 

cause of the material, social and spiritual welfare of all the 

people. For this patriotic and unselfish work, their principal 

reward thus far has been to be lampooned and maligned 

upon the floor of the National House of Representatives. But 

this neither weakens our cause nor discourages our efforts. 

No great cause was ever won in a day, nor without great 

sacrifice. Undismayed and unharmed by the opposition of 

those who have not the capacity to comprehend our 

purpose, nor the honesty to treat fairly even if they had, we 

shall neither abandon the field, nor march under the white 

flag of a dishonorable surrender . . . . During the great Civil 

War, a soldier in the Southern army to which I belonged, was 

observed hastening to the rear, when the commanding 

officer ordered him to "fall in line." He replied, that there was 

no good place to "fall in." Again came the order, sharp and 

decisive, "fall in anywhere, there is good fighting all along the 

line." So it is today. "There is good fighting all along the line." 

The following month, Better Roads and Streets carried an article by Frank 

A. Davis, the association's secretary. He explained a bill Judge Lowe had 

submitted to the Senate subcommittee on roads that would require the 

government to finally honor its commitment to build a national road across 

Missouri. The Shackleford bill, Davis said, "not only is odious to all publicspirited citizens and friends of fair play in this State, but fails utterly to be 

in keeping with the spirit of the promises made by the government when 

Missouri came into the Union." Davis then turned to the recent attack: 

The attacks which the National Old Trails Road Association 

has made upon the Shackleford Bill therefore have been no 

more than earnest endeavor on the association's part to get 
for Missouri what really belongs to her and which she ought 

to have had a generation ago. 

The accusation frequently made in speeches before the 

House of Representatives by Congressman Shackleford, 

that Judge J. M. Lowe refuses to see an honest purpose in 

the proposed measure, is not denied by Judge Lowe, who 

feels that his attitude is indorsed by the facts in the case. 

Judge Lowe printed his speech and Representative Borland's in 

promotional literature for the National Old Trails Road. In later versions, 

Judge Lowe added the following note at the end of Representative 

Borland's speech: 

Shackleford was retired to private life at the ensuing election 

which he graces so well; but why adopt now his defeated 

methods? 

Representative Shackleford was defeated for reelection in November 

1918. (Representative Borland served in the House until his death on 

February 20, 1919.) 

After the House passed Shackleford's ABC Rental Plan, it went to the 

Senate, where Senator Bourne substituted his plan to apportion $1 billion 

among the States based on the issuance of long-term bonds. Senator 

John H. Bankhead of Alabama introduced a bill to establish a National 

Bureau of Highways in Washington to spend $25 million a year on a 

national highway system. However, the Senate adjourned in 1914 without 

approving any of the bills introduced that year. 

What is a Post Road? 

By this point, the constitutional issue that some had used to argue against 

Federal involvement in road building had been set to rest. 

On March 27, 1893, the Supreme Court had ruled in Monongahela 

Navigation Company v. United States, that, "the power of Congress to 

regulate commerce carries with it power over all the means and 

instrumentalities by which commerce is carried on . . . . We are so much 

accustomed to see artificial highways, such as common roads, turnpike 

roads and railroads, constructed under the authority of the States, and the 

improvement of natural highways [waterways] carried on by the general 

government, that at the first it might seem that there was some inherent 

difference in the power of the national government over them. But the 

grant of power is the same." 
The Supreme Court reaffirmed this ruling in a decision on January 7, 

1907. In Wilson v. Shaw, a case involving Federal authority to construct 

the Panama Canal, the decision cited Supreme Court precedents and 

concluded, "These authorities recognize the power of Congress to 

construct interstate highways" under the constitutional right to regulate 

interstate commerce. 

The 1907 decision effectively ended the debate over whether the Federal 

Government could fund road projects. As a result, when Senator Bourne's 

Joint Committee on Federal Aid in the Construction of Post Road issued 

its report in January 1915, it dismissed the issue in three brief paragraphs. 

In sum: 

The constitutionality of the appropriations was supported 

chiefly upon some one or all of the following express Federal 

powers: To establish post roads, to regulate commerce, to 

declare war, to provide for the common defense, to promote 

the general welfare. 

A discussion of constitutionality "would no doubt be interesting" to those of 

legal training, "but we believe the time has long since passed when 

controversy over this issue could be deemed appropriate." Federal aid 

road improvement could "accomplish several of the objects indicated by 

the framers of the Constitution," the report said but, "Above all, it will 

promote the general welfare." 

Nevertheless, the link to "post roads," was strong. The term was used in 

Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution ("To establish Post Offices and post 

Roads"). The institution of rural free delivery of mail, beginning in West 

Virginia in October 1896, had been one of the most effective means of 

persuading farmers of the need for good roads. Representative 

Shackleford's ABC rental bill was based on post roads. Further, the 

$500,000 experimental Federal-aid road program under the Post Office 

Appropriations Act for 1913 had been restricted to roads that are or may 

be designated for rural free delivery of mail. 

The idea of aid to post roads, with its explicit constitutionality, was strong. 

Given this emphasis on post roads, Judge Lowe decided that clarification 

of the term was necessary. After quoting the 1912 National Democratic 

Platform plank on good roads, he asked, "What was a Post Road at that 

time, which Congress was authorized to establish?" He dismissed the idea 

that the phrase meant rural free delivery, which involved carrying the mail 

from the post office to farms, as some had suggested: 
Congress has express authority, under this provision to 

"establish Post Roads," that is, roads leading to the Post 

Offices, where everybody went to get the mail, and no other. 

For support, he noted that Justice Cooly included railroads and 

steamboats in his definition of "post roads," because, "although not in 

existence when the Constitution was adopted they now fill the purpose 

[the Founders] had in view, as roads upon which the mails were carried 

from Post Office to Post Office." Judge Lowe stressed that rural free 

delivery "could not have been contemplated by the Constitution, as they 

nowhere existed at the time of its adoption, and their purpose is exactly 

opposite to all human experience or intellectual contemplation up to that 

time, and hence do not come within the ambiguous meaning and purpose 

of that instrument." 

If, therefore, Federal funds were restricted to rural free delivery routes, the 

roads actually contemplated by the Constitution would be excluded. 

"Congress must look for authority to other Constitutional provisions than 

the clause empowering it to establish Post Offices and Post Roads." He 

cited the commerce clause of the Constitution as justifying construction of 

roads that are "interstate, or national in character." 

"This is no longer an open question," Judge Lowe said, ended by quoting 

the Supreme Court's 1893 decision: "But the grant of power is the same." 

Although the Supreme Court's rulings and the Bourne Committee's 

findings were not based on the "post roads" provision of the Constitution, 

the link would remain on the minds of legislators for many years. In April 

1928, Thomas H. MacDonald, Chief of the Bureau of Public Roads, and 

his assistant, Herbert S. Fairbank, prepared a 56-page paper on "Federal 

Aid as a Road Building Policy." From a historic perspective, the paper 

noted that the modern understanding of "post roads" was "one of those 

curious inversions of the meaning of words" that occurs over time because 

of changing habits and customs: 

The original "post roads" were the highways over which 

journeys were made of such length as to necessitate 

accommodations for the changing of horses and the overnight lodging of travelers. To provide those accommodations 

post houses or inns were established at convenient intervals 

and the roads took their name from these posts . . . . By 

reason of the fact that the carriage of parcels and packets 

necessarily took place over the post roads, the public 

agency which performed that service became the postal 

service, and the stations already established for other 

purposes naturally became the post offices. 
This was, the paper asserts, the understanding of the term "in the minds of 

the framers of the Constitution." 

Signposting the National Old Trails Road 

The Automobile Club of Southern California had long included signposting 

among its important activities. Many of O. K. Parker's surveys of southern 

California roads were combined with signing activities. By May 1914, the 

association's magazine, Touring Topics, was reporting that most of the 

National Old Trails Road in California had been signed. The signs, which 

included a reference to the Automobile Club of Southern California, were 

generating many inquiries about touring conditions. Plans were underway 

to extend the signing to the Grand Canyon: 

With a highway of this character as a lure to the automobilist 

of the East who contemplates journeying to the Pacific 

Coast, the Automobile Club has foreseen an opportunity to 

lend its services toward popularizing the National Old Trails 

route throughout the nation and to cooperate with the men 

and the communities that are so successfully endeavoring to 

put it in good condition for motor travel. 

Exploration had taken place as far east as Albuquerque to arrange for 

signing, but the Automobile Club was considering a more ambitious 

program of signposting. It would continue the signing east to Chicago and 

New York and along the lateral highways to connect principal touring 

centers along the National Old Trails Road with the Lincoln Highway. 

The Automobile Club estimated that because of the signing, several 

thousand automobile parties would journey directly to Los Angeles along 

the Old Trails route instead of "the more widely advertised Lincoln 

Highway." The article pointed out that, "Even a few thousand automobiles, 

with their occupants spending money along the way, means scores of 

thousands of dollars exchanged for supplies and for service in a territory 

that is directly tributary to Southern California." 

Much preliminary work would be needed before the Club could signpost 

the Old Trails route and its feeder roads from points along the Lincoln 

Highway, a total length exceeding 4,000 miles. How much the signs would 

mean "is problematical." But it was safe to say that "a very considerable 

portion of the $40,000,000 estimated expenditure of the motorists who will 

visit the Coast in 1915 will be made along the National Old Trails route, 

and a very large part of it will find its way to Southern California." 

Secretary Standish L. Mitchell of the Automobile Club stated in April 1914 

that the signs, one every mile or two, would be completed in time for 1915 
automobile travel bound for the expositions in San Francisco and San 

Diego. On April 5, 1914, the Needles Eye quoted him as saying, "More 

than $4,000 has been pledged from Los Angeles to Winslow and 

indications are that the proposition has swept all territory east . . . . The 

Automobile Club is desirous of completing this work before the thousands 

of motorists start for California next year, and from all indications, it will be 

done." 

Parker was touring the National Old Trails Road to seek support for the 

project. Having lined up support in the Southwest, he had moved into 

Colorado, which was considered the critical State. An article in the June 

1914 issue of Touring Topics indicated that "it was feared that a lack of 

knowledge of the work accomplished by the Automobile Club of Southern 

California and its importance in highway work might result in refusal to 

cooperate in the Club's sign posting undertaking." Colorado also was 

important because several east-west routes ended in the State: 

If the motor clubs and highway organizations of Colorado 

cooperate whole-heartedly in the Club's campaign it will 

make of that state a gigantic relay station through which the 

eastern tourists will be deflected to the National Old Trails 

route. It will mean that many hundreds of machines that 

have been kept in Colorado during the summer season will 

take the southern route and journey to California in the Fall 

for winter touring on the Pacific Coast. 

Parker found that Colorado enthusiasts already intended to post signs on 

the route from Trinidad to Denver to intersect one branch of the Lincoln 

Highway: 

The signing of these lateral routes, or feeders, that will serve 

to divert a large amount of motor traffic from the northern 

route down through Nebraska and Colorado to the main 

route of the National Old Trails roadway has been a part of 

the general project that was earnestly desired but 

concerning the successful accomplishment of which there 

was grave doubt. 

The success in Colorado left "little doubt" that signs would stretch from the 

Mississippi River to southern California and "will eventually be placed 

along the highway through the East and on into New York City." When that 

happened, "every owner of a motor car in the country will know that there 

is a transcontinental highway, completely signed and improved for safe 

and comfortable automobile travel that leads through the most picturesque 

and scenic portions of America and terminates in the greatest motoring 

region in the United States." 
On July 10, the Eye reported that: 

More than thirty-seven tons of signs and posts, 3000 signs 

and 1200 posts and four months of hard labor by an expert 

crew from the Automobile Club of Southern California will be 

used in sign-posting a transcontinental highway from Kansas 

City to Southern California, preparations for which started 

yesterday. 

The July 1914 issue of Touring Topics described the project and how it 

had grown beyond the original idea of signing only the Southwestern 

portion: 

No motoring organization in the world has ever attempted to 

extend its sign system even a thousand miles beyond the 

limits of its territory. But the Automobile Club of Southern 

California has achieved a record for doing things and . . . has 

little doubt that it will be successful in placing its signs along 

a continuous automobile thoroughfare that will link the 

Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 

The article stated that the National Old Trails Road intersects "everyone of 

the important western automobile roads with the single exception of the All 

Southern Route by way of Fort Worth and Galveston." 

The Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, the Borderland Route, the 

Corn-belt route, the Lincoln Memorial Highway [the Colorado 

predecessor of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway], the 

Pike's Peak route, the White Pole route, the Midland route 

and the Trail to Sunset all converge upon the main route of 

the National Old Trails road, or connect with its northern 

feeder through Colorado. Thus, really, it becomes the spout 

of a giant funnel through which will pour the automobile 

traffic of the entire Middle West and of the western bound 

automobilists of the East. 

The Automobile Club had chosen to sign the National Old Trails Road for 

four reasons "aside from the fact that it drains so extensive an automobile 

territory." First, "the road conditions over this route are better by far than 

are those of any other western highway of like distance." From Kansas 

City to the Pacific, the route included less than 200 miles of poor road. 

Second, climatic conditions made the route "to all practical purposes a 

year-round road." It was impassable only for "a few days at a stretch" as a 

result of snows in Colorado and Kansas. 
Third, the club cited the many places of scenic and historic interest along 

the route: 

The beauties of the Rocky Mountain country, the historic 

associations of the Old Santa Fe Trail, the Indian villages, 

the cliff dwellers' ruins, the Painted Desert, the petrified 

forest, the Grand Canyon, these are some of the unique and 

picturesque attractions that are on the route of the Old Trails 

road. 

The fourth "and one of the very most important" reasons was the fact that 

hotels and garage accommodations existed along the entire distance: 

In this connection it should be said that the Harvey system of 

hotels extends along the National Old Trails Route from 

Kansas City westward to Los Angeles and that an itinerary 

can be arranged that will make one of these excellent 

hostelries the destination of each day's run. 

The first signpost was placed in Los Angeles in front of the Automobile 

Club's property on Southern Figueroa Street. The event was accompanied 

by a celebration "befitting the magnitude of the undertaking." According to 

an article in the September 1914 Touring Topics, the ceremony included 

city officials, the Chamber of Commerce, and officers and members of the 

Automobile Club: 

The first sign of the thousands that will be erected was 

placed in front of the new building that is being constructed. 

President Baker and Vice President Miller of the Automobile 

Club with Miss Trixie Friganza, the famous comedienne, 

assisted in erecting this first one of the direction signs. The 

truck was then christened with appropriate ceremony, and, 

the truck leading, a long procession of motor cars drove to 

the city hall where acting Mayor Whiffen presented the truck 

crew with letters addressed to the majors of Denver and 

Kansas City and the big Moreland rolled out of Los Angeles 

and took the boulevard for San Bernardino and the actual 

beginning of a great sign posting project was underway. 

The article described the truck as "undoubtedly the best equipped and 

most complete vehicle for sign posting work that has ever taken the road." 

The 3-ton chassis had been fitted with a special body that was "subdivided 

into numerous compartments, each enclosed so that none of the tools or 

the signs or posts or any part of the equipment of the crew is exposed." 

Each sign had been numbered and placed in numerical order to save 

time. 
The expedition was expected to last 4 or 5 months, but could be extended 

if plans to post signs to New York were approved. Still, just signposting to 

Kansas City would provide Southern California "a trade stimulus of 

incalculable benefit," according to the August 1914 issue of Touring 

Topics. Signing in California had been completed when the September 

1914 issue was published, and through Arizona by the October issue. The 

club had already received "scores of letters" from motorists stating that the 

signing thus far was so complete that they had not "found it necessary to 

refer to their maps at a single point between Los Angeles and the eastern 

Arizona state line." The current estimate was that the program could be 

completed in December. 

Judge Lowe considered this project a "tremendous work." He explained 

that the sign posts were guaranteed not to exceed $6 each and were "to 

be erected at actual cost." The National Old Trails Road Association was 

treasurer of the funds, "and therefore actively interested in seeing that the 

contracts are properly let and executed." It was worth the expense: 

This is by far the greatest work of the kind that has ever 

been undertaken, and means more to the Old Trails Road 

and to the communities through which it runs than anything 

which has ever been undertaken, next of course to 

permanently building the road. 

He boasted that "no other transcontinental road in America has made 

such progress toward permanency as The Old Trails Road." As the 

Automobile Club had noted, only about 200 miles of the route were in 

rough or poor condition, but work was "in progress" to improve these bad 

stretches. He added that, "Many will no doubt be surprised that these bad 

stretches are principally on the eastern division of the road." He 

summarized road conditions and plans for improvement: 

We are assured that the entire road through the State of 

Maryland is under contract for first class macadam. The 

same is true in Pennsylvania; West Virginia has her link of 

the road under a contract for vitrified brick on a concrete 

foundation. Much of the road through Ohio is under contract 

to be built out of the same material, and one continuous 

twenty-four mile stretch of concrete, and we are assured that 

the entire road across this State will be under contract and in 

process of construction during the year. In Indiana, the road 

is in fairly good shape as far west as Indianapolis, and from 

Indianapolis to Terre Haute the people are moving to put that 

end of it in good serviceable shape. Two-thirds of the road 

across Illinois is under contract for macadam, and active 

work is progressing. Two-thirds of the road across Missouri 
is either built or under contract. From Kansas City to Los 

Angeles, while the road is principally a dirt road, yet it is in 

first class condition. 

Judge Lowe pointed out that neither the Old Trails Association nor the 

Automobile Club would place signs on any segment that is not "put in 

good travelable condition." He added; 

Therefore, it becomes the paramount duty of those residing 

upon these stretches of road which are not in first class 

shape, to get busy at once or they will not be sign posted as 

a part of the Old Trails Road, and travel will therefore be 

diverted and go around such stretches. 

He concluded his exhortation by declaring: 

"See America First," and see it over The Old Trails Road, 

and learn how much its grandeur and interest surpasses 

anything in foreign countries. 

The Automobile Club found additional benefits from the early stages of the 

signposting expedition, as reported in the November 1914 issue of 

Touring Topics: 

Each county and community through which the route passes 

is working with unprecedented energy and enthusiasm for 

the improvement of the highway. Already these counties are 

noting the growth in motor traffic that has resulted from the 

publicity that has been given to the route as a result of the 

Club's signposting work and realizing the further increase in 

automobile travel that will follow when the entire roadway is 

marked they recognize the necessity of placing the road in 

the best possible condition so that each tourist who 

traverses it will advertise it to his friends as more than 

fulfilling the requirements for comfortable automobile travel 

and accommodations. 

Improvements were not confined to the National Old Trails Roads. "Scores 

of tributary routes are being improved and highways are being made 

practicable for motor travel that have heretofore been maintained only for 

wagon traffic." Further, the Automobile Club and the Old Trails Association 

were receiving letters "daily" seeking their cooperation in other signposting 

projects: 

No other single enterprise has so successfully unified good 

roads sentiment in the West as has the signing of the 
National Old Trails Road and the leaven of highway 

improvement that has been introduced by this important 

undertaking may very well produce so great a sentiment for 

Federal roads as to prove a determining influence when the 

subject receives the attention of the next Congress. 

Touring Topics also reported progress on the crossing of the Colorado 

River between Arizona and California. At present, the only crossing was 

the Santa Fe Railroad bridge: 

An appropriation of $75,000 for a vehicle bridge over the 

Colorado at this point has been made jointly by the states of 

California and Arizona and the federal government. The 

construction of this bridge will probably take two years and in 

the meantime vehicle traffic has crossed the Colorado by 

means of a ferry, an expensive method both as to time and 

to cost and one attendant with considerable danger. In order 

to expedite vehicle traffic and to render the National Old 

Trails Highway of greater aid to transcontinental motor 

travel, the Santa Fe Railroad has planked the space 

between its rails over the bridge and has constructed on the 

outer side of each rail a gravel and oiled pathway that 

permits cars to cross the bridge as safely and with as much 

comfort as any vehicle bridge allows. A charge of three 

dollars and fifty cents for each car is made, which is less 

than the former ferry toll, with its great danger and loss of 

time. 

In January 1915, Touring Topics reported that the signing crew had 

reached Pueblo, Colorado, but that the work was "not proving a 

pleasurable occupation for the Automobile Club's construction crew." The 

crew had encountered "zero weather but in spite of the severe cold is 

pushing ahead with the work and abating none of its energy toward 

completing the big project by early spring." 

Work was slowed by the necessity of guarding against a frozen 

carburetor, radiator, and motor: 

Each night all water is drawn from the radiator and the hose 

line between the radiator and the pump is disconnected and 

drained. The pump is then drained also and the motor run 

dry for a minute or two. In the morning it is necessary to pour 

hot water over the pump to free the shaft enough to crank 

the motor, then each cylinder is primed and, after replacing 

the hose connection on the radiator, the carburetor is 

flooded and the motor is started without water in the radiator. 
The next step is to pour warm water into the radiator, 

followed by hot water until it is filled. 

The crew also had to contend with "weak bridges that are not of sufficient 

strength to bear the heavy weight of a loaded truck." To get around weak 

bridges, the crew had to construct a temporary road or ford to cross the 

arroyo or stream. 

Fortunately, although some "unavoidable accidents" had occurred, the 

crew had not had to abandon work because of weather "and this fact is 

eloquent endorsement of this route as a year-round motor highway." The 

Moreland truck had passed the "hardest portion of the trip," except for the 

lateral connection to the Lincoln Highway, and "there remains little 

mountainous country to be covered." 

The men are prepared to carry the work through without 

unnecessary delay and although the truck has encountered 

several snow storms these have not been of sufficient 

severity to prevent continuous signposting. 

Despite the crew's determination, the signposting took longer than 

expected. The July 1915 issue of Touring Topics reported that, "Only a 

few hundred miles remain to be posted" on the way to Kansas City. The 

Automobile Club had recalled the Moreland truck to help resume the club's 

signposting in southern California. 

The final eastern portion of the transcontinental road will be 

signed with the aid of the Club's special charting car which 

has been stored in Kansas City during the past several 

months and with which the remaining work can be 

satisfactorily completed. 

Few members, the article explained, had an "adequate conception of the 

difficulties of signposting a transcontinental route for approximately half its 

length between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans." The article summarized 

the difficulties: 

Snow and rain that hindered progress; culverts too weak for 

the heavy construction truck and which gave way under its 

weight; special equipment that was delayed; consignments 

of posts and markers that failed to arrive at the distributing 

points at the required time. 

Although these and other difficulties had delayed completion of the work, it 

had "conferred a distinct and definite benefit upon the motorists of the 

United States." Aside from the many expressions of appreciation from 
"Easterners" for the work, traffic was increasing along the route. For 

example, during all of 1914, officials of Holbrook, Arizona, counted 194 

transcontinental automobilists passing through the city. During May 1915, 

officials had counted 216 cars, 85 percent of which were westbound on 

the National Old Trails Road. 

The results shown thus far on "the greatest single undertaking in which the 

Automobile Club of Southern California has interested itself" had already 

compensated the organization for its labors. 

American Road Congress 

The 4th Annual Meeting of the American Road Congress was held at the 

Auditorium-Armory in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 9-14, 1914. Several 

hundred delegates arrived on the evening of November 8 on special trains 

from New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, and other 

points. In all, about 3,300 delegates attended, exceeding the number of 

delegates to the 1913 American Road Congress in Detroit. An account in 

the December 1914 issue of Better Roads and Streets called it "not only 

one of the largest, but also one of the most successful road congresses 

that has ever been held in this country." 

Many speakers addressed the need for a national road construction 

program by the Federal Government. Robert P. Hooper, the former 

president of AAA, asked that every influence possible be exerted toward 

construction of a proposed great national highway system across the 

continent. George Diehl, chairing a session on behalf of AAA, informed 

delegates that his organization had established an office in Washington to 

procure legislation for Federal construction of a compact and efficient 

system of public highways that would be the backbone of transportation 

facilities in the United States. AAA did not favor the expenditure of millions 

of dollars over a large area, but rather construction of roads where they 

can and will do the most good. 

Representative Borland also addressed the AAA session. "I believe in a 

national law for good roads," he said. "The investment of Federal funds in 

such a cause is the best economy." He added, "I will not vote for a bill 

which spreads money over a large territory. I want the money centered on 

some special mileage where it can do real good, whether a cent of it is 

spent in my county or not." To open up the country, "we will have to follow 

a system." First would come the "great trunk roads, then the provincial, or 

county roads, and after they are built, then will come the little by-roads." 

Dr. Joseph Hyde Pratt, North Carolina's State Geologist, emphasized that 

the Federal Government should build the main roads, with the roads 

leading to them built by the States. The Federal tax dollars should not be 
divided so that each Congressman would get a small slice for his district. 

A competent commission should be established to decide where the 

money would be spent. 

C. A. Kenyon, president of the Indiana Good Roads Association, agreed: 

If you believe in Federal Aid for roads, get after your 

Washington representatives. Shake your fist under the nose 

of your congressman and tell him if he is not in favor of 

Federal Aid, you are not in favor of him. You will find his ear 

to the ground. See to it also that such a bill is not a "porkbarrel" and do not let your congressman stand for a bill that 

will spread such a fund over every congressional district in 

the country. The right way, and the practical way, I think is to 

put the sum appropriated in the hands of a thoroughly 

competent commission. 

During a session the following day, a letter from President Wilson was 

read to the delegates, stating in part: 

I scarcely need emphasize the social and economic 

importance of good roads. They are the prerequisite to the 

betterment of rural life in a number of directions. Improved 

roads, especially improved community roads from the farm 

to the nearest railway station, are an urgent necessity. They 

are essential for the economical marketing of farm products, 

and for the development of the educational and social 

institutions of the country. 

The President stressed the importance of sound administration of road 

funds. "When the people are fully convinced that they will receive full value 

for every dollar expended on roads, they will be brought more easily to the 

appreciation of the need for further expenditure and will make the requisite 

provision." 

One of the important activities scheduled for the American Road Congress 

in 1914 was organization of a Women's Auxiliary. Logan Page explained 

that Mrs. Robert Baker of Washington was Chairman of the women's 

department of the American Highway Association. The goal was to secure 

the united efforts of women in every county and in every community to 

support good roads. "I hope and believe that the women will accomplish 

marvelous results in bringing about through moral suasion an 

improvement of road conditions in rural communities, and in so doing help 

the cause of better schools, better churches, and better homes." He added 

that their work was "designed to introduce particularly better road 

management and better maintenance of our public roads." 
One of the first speakers during the Women's Conference was Miss 

Frances Pearl Mitchell, president of Women Farmers' Club in Rocheport, 

Missouri. She summarized the good roads work of women in Missouri: 

As far back as 1909 the D.A.R.'s began working for the 

selection of historic roads as State and national highways. 

The result was . . . the organization of a "National Old Trails 

Road Association" to which were eligible any one interested 

in historic roads. 

After summarizing other activities in Missouri, Miss Mitchell concluded: 

Women can do much by their enthusiasm toward getting the 

right kind of road legislation and by their demand for the wise 

and honest expenditure of road funds in their respective 

States and counties. Good roads means the uniting of North 

and South, the East and West into combined effort toward 

progress and advancement of the Nation! 

Mrs. Shephard Foster, representing Miss Gentry of the National Old Trails 

Road Committee of the D.A.R., also addressed the Women's Conference. 

She began by seeking support for the American Revolution Old Trails Act, 

H.R. 2864, introduced by Representative Borland. It provided for 

construction of the National Old Trails Road proposed as a national 

memorial road by the D.A.R. Mrs. Foster summarized the history of the 

road: 

In 1910-11, Mrs. Robert Oliver, State Regent of Missouri, 

appointed Miss Elizabeth Gentry of Missouri, Chairman of 

the State Old Trails Road Committee, whose duty it was to 

urge a State highway across the State following two famous 

old trails. At Miss Gentry's request Governor Hadley of 

Missouri dedicated this road and named it the Old Trails 

Road. Miss Gentry is now chairman of a national committee 

in the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1000 strong, 

representing every State in the Union, actively engaged in 

creating public sentiment for this road. Through the courtesy 

of the Century Company, the Madonna of the Prairies, 

renamed the Madonna of the Trail, has been adopted by this 

committee as its symbol . . . . 

The National Old Trails Road Association was formed at a 

national convention at Kansas City, April, 1912. As stated in 

its By-laws, it was "formed to assist the National Society 

Daughters of the American Revolution to carry forward its 

purpose of making the National Old Trails Road the National 
Highway." This organization of men has over 7,000 

members and handles the business and practical side of the 

question while the Daughters of the American Revolution 

handle the historic and sentimental side. Judge J. M. Lowe, 

of Kansas City, is President of the Association. 

The Daughters of the American Revolution were the first to 

think of a national memorial highway, spanning the continent 

. . . . There are many road bills pending in Congress and we 

admit the necessity for all of these diverging highways. 

Nevertheless, because our great road in the next few years 

will have an unprecedented opportunity to teach American 

history to Americans and because we claim priority for the 

idea of transcontinental highway we want our great ocean to 

ocean road built first. 

Mrs. Foster explained that, "Our plan has a social and political as well as 

an economic value, for our road is made up of several old trails that speak 

one by one of the advance of opportunity, civilization, religion and 

romance, across our continent." It would promote the concept of "See 

America First," diverting some of the estimated $250-300 million that 

Americans spend in Europe every year. 

She summarized the historic origins of the trail, referring to the original 

concept of a National Old Trails Road that included a branch along the 

Oregon Trail. But Representative Shackleford's complaint was also on her 

mind: 

This road has been called "Peacock Boulevard," but along 

this boulevard you may not only see (may I say) beautiful 

"peacocks," but you can delight in the canvas back ducks 

and oysters of Maryland, the beaten biscuits and fried 

chicken of Virginia, the Missouri apple, the Kansas corn and 

the venison steak of the Northwest as well. 

Then she called on the Women's Conference for support: 

The committee wants your support because this Old Trails 

Road is the most practicable outline for an ocean to ocean 

road yet suggested, because its connection links are made 

up of old roads and trails that are replete with history, and 

because there cannot be a route which would be of more 

picturesque and historic interest. 

The old roads have been marked with the crimson blood of 

our forefathers who through their heroic deeds and 
sacrifices, blazed the pathway of American civilization and 

their history is filled with sacred reminiscences. The 

Daughters of the American Revolution ask you to lend your 

influence in behalf of our Old Trails Road Bill as a fitting 

memorial to our pioneer patriots. 

Mrs. Baker, the Conference Chairman, responded that "it is rather difficult 

to explain the attitude of this new woman's department to these specific 

highways. Especially after the delicious menu offered by the National Old 

Trails Roads!" She added: 

This department, of course, is heartily in sympathy with good 

roads everywhere that they serve the demands of present 

day traffic and is deeply sensible of the charm of sentiment 

and association which clings about the old trails. These 

transcontinental highways and all others ought however to 

be built by skillful men, under efficient and economical 

management, and all the various sections of these costly 

roads should be permanently maintained after they are built. 

She noted that between 20 and 40 percent of road funds are wasted 

under the present system of State road management. "How much better to 

stop this enormous leak before pouring out further great streams of money 

for the roads." When road management is as efficient as the management 

of any other big modern business, "Then there will be money enough in 

State treasuries to build the different sections of these splendid roads at 

the smallest cost and with the least expenditure of time and effort." 

Resolutions, 1914 

Delegates to the American Road Congress in Atlanta adopted several 

resolutions. On the subject of Federal road legislation, the delegates 

agreed on the following: 

That the American Road Congress emphatically endorse the 

principle of federal cooperation toward the construction of 

main highways and thus assist the several States to build 

the main market roads in the one-half of the country which is 

devoted to agriculture-and to build through main roads in the 

one-half of the country which is not predominantly 

agricultural, but whose prosperity depends upon mining, the 

raising of live stock, and the presence of the health seeker 

and tourist. 

Another resolution deplored highway accidents and called on authorities 

throughout the nation to enact "the necessary rules and regulations to 
insure the public safety." The delegates also called on the Federal 

Government to build highways across all Indian and forest reservations 

and all other federalized areas to provide connecting links in established 

routes of travel. 

The delegates also adopted a resolution in support of the Lincoln 

Highway: 

That the Lincoln Highway Association be commended for its 

successful voluntary effort in arranging with counties, cities 

and townships for a connected series of roads across the 

United States, thus providing a definite and continuous route 

to be used wholly or in part by those who wish to become 

acquainted with the agricultural, mining and scenic 

advantages of their own land. 

A New Highway Organization 

While at the convention, State highway officials met to consider forming an 

organization that would represent their interests. They believed that the 

American Highway Association, formed by Page as an umbrella 

organization of many interests, was not the best representative of the 

States. One State highway official, George Coleman of Virginia, 

complained that the American Highway Association displayed a "strong 

and persistent jealousy" of the American Road Builders Association, which 

covered some of the same ground. 

State highway officials had discussed the idea throughout the year. In 

March, Page had written to Coleman in agreement about the importance 

of establishing an organization that would allow the U.S. Office of Public 

Roads to stay in closer touch with the State highway officials. These early 

discussions resulted in a dinner at the Georgian Terrace Hotel under the 

auspices of Mr. A. C. Batchelder, Executive Secretary of AAA, and Mr. 

Diehl. The State officials issued a call to all State highway commissions 

and departments to meet in Washington at the Raleigh Hotel on 

December 12, 1914, "to assist in drafting a bill to be presented to 

Congress, which will embody a plan of Federal cooperation in road 

construction." 

During the December 12 meeting, the State highway officials established 

the American Association of State Highway Officials, which would play a 

major role in creation of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916. 

END PART 1 

to be continued 
Special thanks to Rick Roam for providing copies of Touring Topics and 

The Needles Eye articles used in this report.