Pondering Alabama Maps (6): A 1913 Highway Proposal

The main map below was developed in 1913 by the National Highways Association, a private organization founded two years earlier by businessman Charles Henry Davis. The group's motto was "Good Roads Everywhere" and it supported a national road system developed and maintained by the federal government. This map illustrates the proposed 50,000 miles of roads. The partial map shows Alabama's share in better detail. 

The NHA's proposal was never adopted by Congress, but the idea of a national highway system lived on. A "Good Roads Movement" had actually begun in the 1870's, long before automobiles needed them. Bicyclists were behind that idea. 

You can read about the U.S.'s national highway system here and the country's numbered roads system here.    

Martin Olliff's 2017 book is an excellent history of these matters with a focus on Alabama.

 

 

Charles Henry Davis [1865-1951]

Source: U.S. Federal Highway Administration

Pondering Alabama Maps (4): Early State Road Maps

In the first three installments of this series I looked at the city of Pelham on some old maps. Why Pelham, you ask? I live there, silly! Now let's look at some early statewide road maps. 

One of the earliest Alabama road maps is surely the 1914 one below, which can be found at UA's Alabama Historical Maps collection. Below the state map is a detailed look at roads in Shelby, Bibb, Chilton and Autauga counties. This map was drawn by civil engineer and draftsman H.E. Anschutz under the direction of W.S. Keller and R.P. Boyd, State Highway Engineer and his assistant respectively. 

UPDATE on 2 July 2015: Historian Martin Olliff recently pointed out to me that W.S. Keller was Helen Keller's half-brother.

Notice anything interesting in the detail from Mr. Anschutz's creation?? That's right--in all this spaghetti, none of the roads have names or number designations. You'll find the same thing on the 1924 map in the digital collection. 

Now let's take a look at the state's 1925 road map:

And here's a zoom of the Selma-Clanton-Montgomery area:

Now we see some numbers on these roads. At first they seem like mileage numbers, but that doesn't work out. These numbers are the early highway designations in Alabama. 

No draftsman is identified prominently on this 1925 map, although I suspect we find his name in the lower right corner: D.E. Shields and the year 1924. 

In the next installment I'd like to continue by looking at some more state road maps from the 1920's and into the 1930's.

A fascinating history of the early "good roads" movement in Alabama is Martin Olliff's "Getting on the Map: Alabama's Good Roads Pathfinding Campaigns, 1911-1912" in the Alabama Review 2015 January; 68(1): 3-30.