Road Trip

Contributing to the decline of Main Street was the automobile.  Highways were built to serve only the automobile.  They were isolated from pedestrians, from the landscape, from businesses.  Those driving those automobiles were also isolated from each other and their city.

Attempts to "beautify" the highway by removing advertiser billboards never worked.  Companies claimed it would create a landscape that caused boredom without billboards and that led to sleepy drivers who caused accidents.  (seriously??) Others claimed it was a distraction that caused accidents - as we see today the billboard won out.

The city center ceased to be the destination for anyone with a car.   A driver could get away from work, get away from home, get away from congestion and basically go anywhere in an automobile.  No longer did people have to go where the railroad went or where the bus went.  They could go where they wanted to go.  Early major cities with waterways like Chicago, St. Louis, Boston and New York couldn't keep citizens from driving to other location with waterways as long as it was somewhere else!

Paving streets and highways diffused the population further.  The first major federal highway act was the Federal Aid Road Act which was originally passed in 1916 to speed up the mail.  These roads were based on Congress' constitutional power to establish "post roads."  The true aim was to build a national network of roads.

In 1925 a uniform system of numbering and marking east-west highways in multiples of 10 was established.  Starting with the Atlantic seaboard post road as US 1, it ran across the nation to the Pacific seaboard as US 101.  A uniform design for marking roads was incorporated.  States  developed their own numbering and marking systems as well.

This national network was a symbol of the many destinations of American automobiles.  The "high road" became the "high way" of importance, taking citizens everywhere and anywhere.

Next time - Up, Up and Away
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was adopted, giving women the long fought for right to vote.  It took 70 years of struggle by women suffragists to reach the basic right of voting in the United States.