Douglas daily dispatch., 1926-02-04
SIGNING THE ROADS DESCRIBED
BY STATE ENGINEER IN FEATURE
ADDRESS AT STATE CONVENTION

One of the outstanding features o
the two-day meeting of the Arizon'
Good Roads association held at Yum
on Monday and Tuesday was the ad
dress made by State Engineer w. c
Lefebvre, which follows:
"The subject that / have chosen i
the signing of the United State
Highways through Arizona.
There has been a feeling abroad
in the country for a long time tha
there should be better way of dis
seminating information in regard t
national highways. The wonderful
work that has been done by some O
the national trail marking associa
tions should not be deprecated, OF
the other hand there have been many
instances of personal gain. This is
also true of communities where cham.
bers of commerce have made up or
ganizations composed of the chambers
of commerce of the communities, ga
rages and service station, where the
object was to route traffic-not ove1
the best roads but through most OF
the towns that were members of the
routing organizations.
"Other reasons for this action were;
"(1) Trails through two or more
states-not connecting.
"(2) Trails that are local only.
"(3) Trails for commercial pur-
poses.
"(4) Trail associations organized
to provide salaries.
"(5) Attempts to perpetuate his
toric trails.
"(6) Results mostly in poor mark
ing.
"(D Two hundred and fifty mark
ed trails exist.
"(S) Overlapping of routes due to
lack of correlation.
"(9) Instances where 20 per cent
of trail Tapped other routes.
600 Instances where single trail
overlapped II other trails.
"q1) One section of road carried
eight different route markers.
"d2) Two or more roads bearing
same designations.
"Q3) Faulty location based neither
on economic or engineering grounds
located from financial standpoint.
eff the wonderful federal highway
system, with it's connecting state and
county highways stretching from coast
to coast, was to be utilized TO it's full
lest extent, it was felt certain that
some more intelligent system of rout-
ing the traffic from east to west
and north to south. must be found.
Il was with this idea in view that
the American association of state high
way officials, composed, at its name
indicates, of the officials Of the high
way departments of all the states, at
the annual 1924 meeting at San Fran
cisco, requested the secretary of agri-
culture to take note of this condition
and to promulgate plans whereby the
public might be kept bstter informed
as to the best routes of travel, and
to appoint board composed of roper
sentatives of the state highway de-
partments and of the bureau OF pub
lie roads,
with this idea in view the secre-
tary of agriculture, on March 2, 1925,
appointed engineers who were the
heads of various state highway or
ganizations throughout the country
and also appointed representatives of
the bureau of public roads to assist
in the work of the selection, the num-
bering, and to outline a sytem of
signing the highways. The co-opera-
ting agencies who materially assisted
the bureau of public roads and the
American Association of States High
way Officials were: The Bureau of
Standards, the Conference on Street
and Highway Safety, the National Sa-
fety council, the Council of National
Research, the American Engineering
Standards committee, the Westfng-
house company and the General Elec-
trio company.
"Group meetings were held at diff
ferent points throughout the United
States to determine the routes that
should be selected as arteria1 in char
acter for those districts, to discuss
the numbering of these routes ard the
matter of signing them. Meetings
were held at San Francisco, Kansas
City, Chicago, Atlanta, New York City
and Boston. All of these group meet
ings were we'll attended and every
highway department in the United
States was represented.
"Last August a meeting was held
in Washington, D. c., where the in
formation gathered at the group meet
ing was assembled and the final
details of the numbering system and
the placing of signs were consum-
mated. At meeting hald last No
vember in Detroit the American AS
sociation of state highway officials
approved the system as laid out, and
also the numbering of these routes
and the system of placing signs along
them The secretary of agriculture
on Nov. 1S, 1925, approved the action
of the American Association of State
Highway Officials and its co-ordinat-
ing bodies. Every state has given its
pledge to place markers along these
arteria1 highways in conformity will
the standards adopted at these meet
ings. In order that the numbering
of the Arizona highways might coin
eide with that of the government the
state highway department mas waited
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