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