The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1931-03-19
ROADS in WASHINCTON'S
DAY AND PRESENT Time
Congressman DOwell Discusses
an Age-Old Subject-ImprOved
ROadways in America

ROadways in America
"What satisfaction it would give
George Washington" said Congress
man C. G. Dowell of Iowa, eff he could
return today and see what modern en-
gineering has done to provide this
country with system of roads" Con-
gresham Dowell is himself chairman
of the House Committee on Roads, and
takes immense pride in the nations
effort to provide itself with perhaps
the greatest highway network ever
built, according to the Division Of In
formation and Publication of the Geo.
Washington Bicentennial Commission.
washington, himself tireless
traveller" continued Congressman
Dowell, "early saw the necessity of
roads, and throughout his life encour-
aged improvement of these indispen-
sable means to the country's growth.
His pleasure in what we of today have
accomplished would be all the greater
because in his time bodybuilding had
to languish and struggle. The early
Colonists were entirely too busy in
fighting Indians and clearing the will
derness to think of clearing perma-
nent highways. The only means of
reaching out from their little settle
ments were the trails of the Indians.
During the Revolution, Washing
ton often found rough and backward
roads one of his military difficulties,
and the strain of war left the strug-
Cling nation neither time nor money
for road Improvement. Today we have
every resource of modern engineering
to aid US in a time when nothing i'm
pedes US in realizing long-recogniz-
ed need-the need Of ready commune
cation in the development of the ma
ton. I am sure that what we have
accomplished would amaze Washing
ton as much as it would delight him.
GAS one of the best informed men
of his time, alert to every fact in the
growth of the country about him,
Washington must have borne with pa
thence the backward state of young
Americas roads. Blazing the first
primitive openings through the for
est had been a slow and arduous task.
Soon after 1920, five centers of colo
nization began throwing out rude
paths. These were Massachusetts, the
Connecticut River and Long Island re-
gions, the territory around the mouth
of the Hudson and about Delaware
and Chesapeake Bays. But these were
hardly more than bride paths.
"For years white settlements were
confined to a strip of territory $50
miles wide along the Atlantic sea-
coast, blocked off on the west by the
impenetrable Alleghenies. Travel then
was by horseback only, and in a gen
orally north-and-south line. Yet it
was just this primitive travel that
gradually heightened and established
what we have now perpetuated as
Route 1, from Boston to Baltimore,
the first real main highway in the
United States, a muddy and dusty
trail in time to be rutted by the fam
Gus Conestoga Wagon.
"In time the barrier of the Alleghe-
MES came to be penetrated by Gen.
Forbes, then by Braddock, and later
by Daniel Boone-familiar to Wash
ington in his earliest campaigns in
to Western Pennsylvania. But in 1892,
too late to have gladdened Washing
ton, the first paved highway in the
United States came into being. This
was the road from Philadelphia to
Lancaster, soon to be famed as the
Lancaster Pike. By 1902, coach SER
vice had been extended from Boston
as far south as Savannah, distance
of 1000 miles, and stages were able
to make this journey in % IL days,
often travelling the astonishing dis
lance of So miles in day.
'In 1906 Congress defined the first
approach to national bodybuilding
policy in establishing the National
Pike from Cumberland, Maryland, to