Getting Out of the Mud: The Alabama Good Roads Movement and Highway Administration, 1898–1928

264 Pages·2017·11.26 MB·English

by  Martin T. Olliff

GETTING OUT OF THE MUD

GETTING OUT
OF THE MUD
The Ala bama Good Roads Movement
and Highway Administration, 1898–1928
MARTIN T. OLLIFF
Foreword by David O. Whitten
The University of Ala bama Press
Tuscaloosa
The University of Alab ama Press
Tuscaloosa, Ala bama 35487- 0380
uapress.ua.edu
Copyright © 2017 by the University of Alab ama Press
All rights reserved.
Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the
University of Alab ama Press.
Typeface: Caslon
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover image: One of eleven automobiles on a “pathfinding tour” from Birmingham
to Mississippi sponsored by the Birmingham Ledger to test a potential new interstate
route, ca. 1911–12; courtesy of the Birmingham Public Library Archives
Cover design: David Nees
Cataloging- in- Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978- 0- 8173- 1955- 7
E- ISBN: 978- 0- 8173- 9138- 6
Contents
Foreword vii
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. When Roads Were Bad 15
2. Alabamians Become Wide-A wake to Good Roads 39
3. State Highways Take the Lead 60
4. Peering beyond the State’s Boundaries: Named Trails and Interstate
Highways 85
5. Laying the Foundation for a Modern Highway System 130
6. Ala bama Administers Its Highway Program 155
Conclusion 176
Notes 185
Bibliography 225
Index 241
Illustrations follow page 115.

Foreword
In Getting Out of the Mud: The Alab ama Good Roads Movement and Highway
Administration, 1898–1928, Professor Marty Olliff has set out in detail the
chain of events and the men and women driving it to create the infrastruc-
ture of roads, highways, bridges, and tunnels that positioned the state of
Ala bama to support its economy in the twentieth century. Scholars have
accumulated an impressive collection of studies of the good roads move-
ment nationally, but state-s pecific analyses are of ten lacking. In his exten-
sively documented study, Olliff observes how the vario us groups seeking
better ground transportation in Alab ama differ from similar organizations
in other states, in their efforts and their results, as they dealt with the state’s
particular electorate, politics, administrations, needs, resources, geography,
and economy. Olliff weaves a unique combination of history, sociology, po-
liti cal science, and economics to create a three-d imensional fabric.
In The Life of Reason (1905), George Santayana wrote, “Those who can-
not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That sentiment is par-
ticularly applicable to origins of ground transportation development in Ala-
bama and the United States. In the middle of the seco nd decade of the
twenty- first century, the achievements of the good roads advocates, who la-
bored between 1898 and 1928, are once again on the national list of problems
to be addressed. Every year thousands of miles of US roads and highways
and hundreds of bridges and viaducts are abandoned because the money to
maintain them is hard to come by as citizens (voters) resist taxes and sup-
port politicians who stand for lower taxes and smaller government. Ala-
viii / David O. Whitten
bamians, like their fellow Ameri cans, separate their demand for government
services from the need for taxes. Some states are dealing with the demand
for more and better highways, on the one hand, and the refusal to accept
higher taxes, on the other hand, by constructing toll roads.
Toll roads may solve some highway problems where the traffic is suffi-
cient to pay for construction and maintenance—interstate highways that
carry thousands of vehicles daily. But rural roads cannot make enough
from tolls for construction, maintenance, and collection of tolls, as county
governments and entrepreneurs discovered when they constructed short
stretches paved with dirt (soil surface roads), gravel, wood, rubber, iron, and
sometimes nothing and attempted to pay for the work by charging users
for passage.
Moreover, the mid- twentieth-c entury “one citizen, one vote” doctrine
(then called “one man, one vote”) increased the po liti cal strength of ur ban
Ameri cans at the expense of their rural neighbors. The Supreme Court de-
cision in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) ruled that voting districts must be drawn
to give citizens equal po liti cal power no matter where they live. Before the
decision, rural voters had more influence per person than did urban vot-
ers. Urban areas of the nation had been long underrepresented in Congress
and state legislatures, while rural districts were overrepresented. Opposition
to the court order was built on the contention that rural voters were more
moral and civic-m inded than city dwellers.
One citizen, one vote reduced the po liti cal power of rural voters to build
and maintain roads and bridges and allowed roadbuilders to concentrate on
highways within and between metropolitan areas—the areas where most
of the population live. In the early twenty- first century the infrastructure
put in place a century earlier is falling into disrepair in the face of insuffi-
cient revenue to bring it up to safe standards and, at once, build the new
highways demanded by an expanding population of people and vehicles.
Highway revenues are being used in high traffic areas while rural roads and
bridges are abandoned and closed to traffic.
So, Olliff’s study of how Alab ama dealt with serious pol itic al and re-
source obstacles to the construction of a road syst em that would accommo-
date economic growth in the twentieth century may offer clues to the res-
urrection of that sys tem in the twenty- first century. Many of the problems
are unchanged over the hundred years between crises: Alabamians demand
good roads and a government that has the capacity to build and maintain
them at the same time that voters are putting into office men and women
who promise lower taxes and smaller government. Farmers are finding it
increasingly difficult to make a living where the cost of getting their crops
to market increases as the roads built to avoid the mud tax are abandoned
Foreword / ix
and as politicians concentrate on winning votes in the urban precincts that
will determine who is elected. The mud tax may win after all.
On another rural-n eed front, Internet access in twenty- first- century rural
America parallels the need for roads and bridges in the twentieth. The In-
ternet defines the early decades of this century; should the United States
allow the creation of two nations separated by Internet access, the nation,
its population, and its economy, will suffer just as it would have suffered
without the rural roads and bridges of the early twentieth century. The same
situation exists: Rural Ameri cans want Internet access; urban Ameri cans
have Internet access and little concern for the needs of their rural neigh-
bors. Both groups see the advantage of access, but they also agree that taxes
should be lower and government smaller. Yet, what is good for part of the
nation is good for the entire nation.
A conclusion imbedded in the Olliff work is the capacity of the push-
pull politics of a democracy to solve a serious social/pol iti cal problem de-
spite numbers of different ideas, positions, and opposition. Olliff identifies
multiple players in the good roads conflict of the early twentieth century.
Some favored federal leadership, but others wanted decisions made at the
county and state levels. Good roads advocates of ten worked at cross pur-
poses, yet the ground transportation syst em in Ala bama and the United
States took form, and while less than perfect, it provided city- to- city, state-
to- state, and farm- to- market roads that continued to develop after Olliff’s
study period and served the nation until the interstate highway syst em of
the Eisenhower administration took shape. The same push and pull will
have to solve the problem of declining state and county roads and the de-
terioration of the interstate syst em in the twenty-fi rst century.
Dr. David O. Whitten