The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1928-12-13

ual and every community to be in
terested primarily in certain few
roads. In speaking for the State
Highway department, however, l
must discuss the general road sit
uation. After all we cannot hope
to make any permanent and extern
sive improvement in one or two
routes unless we are also improv-
ing other parts of the system. 1t
is true that contracts are let for
portions of one road at a time,
but in deciding upon any such
work we must consider the road
in relation to other roads, its
state of improvement and the traf-
fic it bears as compared to other
roads in the system, as well as the
total funds available.
Unlike the European nations,
where the national governments
have always exercised more or less
supervision over road building, in
the United States it was left al
most entirely to the local units. In
Minnesota the constitution origin
ally provided that the state should
never be a party to carrying on
public works, or contract any
debts for that purpose. But dur
ing the latter part of the last CEN
fury, long before the automobile
had created a demand for good
roads, a great many people began
to realize that to make any pro-
gress in road building, there must
be engineering supervision, re.
search and experiment, and there
must be some co-ordinated plan
instead of scattering the work in
small driblets over great road
system. These men understood
that to get better results, the
state or federal governments must
step in and do the investigating
and experimenting, collect data
and make it available to road build
ers, Just as the states had done for
agriculture through the expert
ment stations and farm schools,
and as the universities had done
for medicine and engineering and
other professions.
New Jersey created the first
state highway department and
Congress established Office of
Road Inquiry in the nineties. The
latter has now become the u. s.
Bureau of Public Roads. 1t took
thirty years before all the States
followed New Jerseys example
and created state highway depart
ments. Our own state created the
first highway commission in 1906.
With all the road work which
had been done since territorial
days, there were only about 5000
miles of gravel road in the state
in 1906. Regardless of the stories
often told about the old method
of working out road taxes, I
know from personal observation
that thousands of the farmers of
the state went into this road build
ing with the same zeal and energy
and with the same unselfish pub
lie spirit with which they built
schools and churches and homes.
If to their energy there could have
been added engineering skill and
management, surely we would have
had more than six thousand miles
of gravel to show for these efforts.
1t is significant that by 1921, af-
ter fifteen years of education and
supervision by the~ highway COM
mission and a moderate amount of
state aid, the mileage of surfaced
roads in the state had been in
creased to $4,000. In fifteen
years, with state participation, one
and half times as much had been
accomplished as in the previous
sixty.
The coming of the automobile,
however, greatly stimulated in
terest in good roads, and in 1921
the trunk highway plan went in
to effect, the state taking over T.
600 miles of more important roads
and taxing the cost directly to
motor vehicle owners. When it
adopted this plan the state also
retained the state aid plan, retain
ed the requirement that every
county should employ a highway
engineer, and continued to- ex-
tend it's supervision over the roads
which received state aid. The
counties and towns were not only
relieved of the upkeep of the
main highways and permitted to
spend all their money on the Sec
ondary roads, but they had the
benefit of the research and expert
mental work done by the state and
federal governments. AS a re-
suit of the increased funds and
modern methods of road building,
we have increased total mileage
of surfaced roads in Minnesota,
state and local, from $1,000 in
1921 to $4,000 in 1928. When
we consider all roads together,
there are only two states, Indiana
and Ohio, which have a consider
ably greater mileage of surfaced
roads than Minnesota, and one