MOST roads ? The completely private road went out with the 18th century. The transcontinental railro

While known to most automotive enthusiasts as the man behind the Indianapolis Motor Speedway cruise and stay hawaii and the Indy 500, Carl Fisher s greater contribution to automotive history, now largely forgotten, came a couple of years later when he built the country s first coast-to-coast highway, the Lincoln Highway, which the Classic Car Club of America plans to traverse for its 2013 Re-Discover America cruise and stay hawaii CARavan.
Fisher, an automobile racer, dealer, and parts supplier, actually switched over from bicycles to automobiles around the turn of the century, as did many automotive pioneers. No doubt through his involvement with bicycles he realized the importance of building and improving roads not just within cities cruise and stay hawaii but all across the country, the motivation behind the Good Roads Movement. That goal became increasingly more important with the introduction of the automobile, which would require an extensive road network for Americans to adopt it what good is owning a car if you have nowhere to drive it? so not long after the inaugural Indianapolis 500, Fisher turned his attention toward building a transcontinental highway.
Basing the New York-to-San Francisco route partly on existing roads and historic trails, the Lincoln Highway Association began its publicity campaign which included cruise and stay hawaii lobbying local and state governments and even raising funds to build sections of the route itself in 1913. That publicity then led to a proliferation of highways across the country, all formally cruise and stay hawaii codified by the federal cruise and stay hawaii government in 1926 under the U.S. numbered highways system. Its largest impact, however, was on a young Dwight Eisenhower, who traveled cruise and stay hawaii the Lincoln cruise and stay hawaii Highway in 1919 and realized the importance of a federal highway network, leading to the introduction of the national Interstate system in 1956.
Today, cruise and stay hawaii much of the Lincoln Highway has been paved over or rerouted, but it will serve as a general template for the route that the CCCA will take from New York to San Francisco, traveling through a dozen states over the three-week period cruise and stay hawaii from May 4 to May 26. Along the way, the tour will visit museums and collections of note and include a number of scenic routes. For more information, visit ClassicCarClub.org .
If you don t have a certified Full Classic, two other tours will celebrate the Lincoln Highway s centennial next year. The Lincoln Highway Association has planned its tour for June 21-30, with two contingents leaving from New York City and San Francisco and meeting in the middle at Kearney, Nebraska. Then, shortly after that tour wraps up, another group open to any pre-1979 vehicle plans to traverse the highway cruise and stay hawaii from New York City to San Francisco from July 1-26.
President Eisenhower s push for a federal cruise and stay hawaii highway interstate system may have been initated by his travels on the Lincoln Highway. But his final vision of separated lane directions, on and off ramps, and the elimination of traffic lights were more likely influenced by the autobahns he saw in Germany while commanding the United States to victory in World War II.
This is what owning a antique car is all about, driving them! I have driven my 1937 Cord Beverly 400 miles since August 29th.. Yesterday I was driving on an interstate, staying with the flow at 70 MPH plus, enjoying nice music on my 37 AM radio, enjoying my Classic. cruise and stay hawaii As a member of CCCA and the owner of a Classic Cord I just wish I could join this tour.
My 4th grade geography text used the Lincoln Highway to teach the geography of the United States. As we traversed the entire cruise and stay hawaii country on that road we learned about our great country. That was a long time ago, but I still take every opportunity to travel it and recall cruise and stay hawaii those long ago georgraphy lessons.
I am glad this fact of history was posted. MOST roads and bridges, elevateds and subways, canals and ferries, transit systems and railways pre-date federal funding. In fact, the private sector DID build a huge proportion of the country s infrastructure. Today, we are seeing a movement back to that with private tollroads, bridges, and even space travel (as NASA fades for the time being).
MOST roads ? The completely private road went out with the 18th century. The transcontinental railroad cruise and stay hawaii would never have been built without a lot of government cruise and stay hawaii real estate being given to the operators. Roads and transportation infrastructure have always been a public concern and that goes all the way back to the Romans.
Yes, most roads. Florida s Highway A1A is a good example. The Hiller history of Highway A1A delineates the private sector funding of people like Henry Flagler to encourage cruise and stay hawaii coastal development. Another good example from Flagler contradicts your incorrect assumptions about transportation infrastructure always being public. His RR to Key West was privately funded ($50M) and completed by his company in 1912. There are thousands of such examples. In almost every major city in America, the transit systems were built privately and THEN converted to public by massive subsidies. This trend began to be reversed in the 1980 s, with the advent of privatization , which is merely a return to private ownership and/or management of transportation: air, space, transit, cruise and stay hawaii roads, bridges, toll facilities. You need to dig much deeper. Oh, and that government real estate for the transcontinental RR. Um, the native americans sort of disputed that particular ownership claim, as did a helluva lot of homesteaders. Nonetheless, it was a private venture, cruise and stay hawaii the railroad itself. Today, thousands of miles of road are built by private developers every year, which then get dedicated to cities cruise and stay hawaii and counties, often as the price paid for approving developments. Those are PRIVATE roads first, which afterwards become public.
I think we re succumbing to the national disease of either-or-ism. There is (and always has been) a role to play for both the private and public sector in development of infrastructure. As in many situations, cruise and stay hawaii where there is a national interest in developing a program, it s often been a partnership between federal, state, and private interests that have combined to execute the plan. The interstate system is a good example. It was federal and state funding that financed them, and private contractors who built them. If it were truly a federal project from conception to execution, they d have used the Corps of Engineers.
Eisenhower, as a young Army officer and West Point graduate, was part of an Army convoy traveling cruise and stay hawaii coast-to-coast and was frustrated by the length cruise and stay hawaii of time that it took to traverse the U.S. by highway in 1919.
The military implications were clear, and became doubly so after WWII when viewing the fragility of rail transport versus the flexibility of the highway system. [The Allies had just obliterated the German rail system by aerial attacks]
The freedom to easily go anywhere, plus the ease with which truckers could now travel [even coast-to-coast, if they had to] was a TREMENDOUS boost to business and helped America achieve unheard-of levels of prosperity in the post-war period.
In this Cold War period, the Army would no longer need to rely on the railroads for transport in the event of mobilization. If [shudder] a nuclear strike or air attack blew a hole in the highway system, a fleet of bulldozers and graders could re-establish a contiguous system in days, if not hours! Army vehicles designed to go over open terrain could travel virtually unimpeded.
As a postscript, this all happened at a time when the highways were mostly uncrowded, [except for choke points like the notorious "Bridgeport Bottleneck"], cruise and stay hawaii air travel expensive, truck traffic was light, and long-haul cruise and stay hawaii trucking still adventurous.
Re the temporary runway for aircraft comment, I read somewhere that the original charter required that there be stretches of straight highway with unobstructed overhead at specified intervals of sufficient length to land military aircraft. I always wondered what the length spec was, and on what aircraft it was predicated.
From memory, I think there had to be a straight 3 mile stretch every so often, just like there was supposed to be a curve every so many miles to keep people awake. I also seem to remember the design spec for curves, banking, grade, etc. was 100 MPH using the 1950 s cars.
The utility of the Interstate system to the military in the event of a nuclear attack could, of course, only be proven had an attack actually occurred, which [Thank God!] it never did. Of course there was a lot of propaganda out in those Cold War days.
I should add a second post-script and say that Eisenhower evidently cruise and stay hawaii considered the Interstate System to be the successor to rail passenger cruise and stay hawaii travel and promoted the Interstates while neglecting any action to halt or reverse declining cruise and stay hawaii rail passenger revenues. Once, when the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad complained to Ike that certain legislation was killing cruise and stay hawaii rail passenger service, Ike just looked at him and shrugged, as if to say So what? .
I also studied it in my 1940 s grade school reading text here in Alhambra, California. It included descriptions of the preparation of the portland style concrete mix , and the celebrations as each city was added to the network of roads.
My mother , Margaret , from an enginering and racing family in Indianapolis cruise and stay hawaii ,travelled the road 4 times in 1922 and 1927 from Indianapolis, and detoured via Colorado to Los Angeles ,some on connecting dirt roads . Her transportation was a Model T Ford driven by her grandfather .
I travelled the Lincoln Hwy with the Oldsmobile Centennial Caravan heading to Lansing for Oldsmobile s 100th Anniversary. What a great trip. Fantastic people all along the way. If anyone has ever said that Americans are not friendly, they have not travelled the USA by car.
That trip has inspired my latest venture. To lead a caravan of old cars from Alberta through Banff Ntl Pk, and the Rockies to Cal Hwy 1 and 101, the Redwoods, down the coast to San Diego, to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, into Colorado cruise and stay hawaii up to