on the several governments to furnish transportation, assistance, maps, existing survey records and other such cooperation that would help in carrying out the required field work. Office space and drafting quarters were provided rent-free by Panama in the National Palace until the conclusion of the field work in May 1933. This was the genesis of the “Inter-American Highway,” a section of the hemispheric Pan-American Highway System.[N 1]
- ↑ Although the road from Laredo, Texas, to Panama City is commonly referred to as the Inter-American Highway, the section of road from the southern border of Mexico to Panama constitutes the length in which the U.S. Government, through the BPR (FHWA), has participated.
President Calvin Coolidge welcomes the Pan American Highway Commission at the White House in 1924. This group, representing 19 Latin American countries, toured the United States to observe construction progress under the Federal-aid program.
As a followup in March 1930, the U.S. Congress appropriated $50,000, previously authorized in the joint resolution, “To enable the Secretary of State to cooperate with the several Governments, members of the Pan American Union, when he shall find that any or all of such States having initiated a request or signified a desire to the Pan American Union to cooperate in the reconnaissance surveys to develop the facts and to report to Congress as to the feasibility of possible routes, the probable cost, the economic service and such other information as will be pertinent to the building of an inter-American highway or highways.”[1]
The Act specified that all official contacts were to be made by the Department of State, and by arrangement with the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Public Roads was to conduct the reconnaissance.
By June 21, 1930, an engineering party of BPR engineers had left the United States for Panama, and by July 1, 1930, the Office for the Technical Committee of the Commission in Panama was established and located, at the invitation of the Government of Panama, in the National Palace.
By May 1933 the field work was complete, and work began in Washington on the report to be submitted to Congress.
First U.S. Appropriation for Construction
In 1934 an appropriation of $5 million was requested from the U.S. Congress. It was estimated that this amount would be required to construct a passable dirt road which would connect the existing stretches of road and, thus, make the Inter-American Highway a continuous reality. Congress, however, only appropriated $1 million which was to be divided between Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama for plans and construction of a number of major bridges and the continuation of survey work. The first construction work was to be
- ↑ Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1930 (46 Stat 115).
