programs, and about half of the States had State-aid programs, some of which were financed by State bond issues.[N 1] Roads were improved with borrowed money faster than the supervisors could arrange to take care of them, and in this emergency, the counties turned to the OPE for advice and assistance.
To meet this demand, Page set up a Division of Maintenance in the OPR under Edwin W. James which embarked on an ambitious program of instruction and demonstration. James’ engineers studied the details of State maintenance in States that had effective highway departments and also in selected counties, some with good maintenance programs and some with poor ones. They also persuaded a number of strategically located counties with new bond-financed roads to introduce adequate maintenance on one selected demonstration road in each county, the work to be under OPR supervision.
Knowing who is responsible for the condition of the road and appealing to the pride of the patrolman.
The capstone of the maintenance program was a mammoth demonstration road, involving 49 counties in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, the purpose of which, in Page’s words, was “conducting an object lesson in road maintenance on a sufficient scale to attract general attention, and at the same time render the largest amount of assistance at the least relative cost to the Office of Public Roads . . .”[2] Under the plan adopted for this “Washington-Atlanta Highway,” a continuous route between these cities was traced over existing county roads, the combined length of which was 1,038 miles. The participating counties agreed first to put the selected roads in good condition and then to accept the supervision of an engineer assigned by the OPR who would approve all maintenance expenditures.
Removing the ridge with a drag after a cultivator has loosened the material.
The work began in the spring of 1914 with only 723 miles under the cooperative plan and three experienced engineers detailed by the OPR to supervise the work. The experiment continued until 1917 when the OPR had to withdraw its engineers for more urgent work. The success of the maintenance plan was attested by the fact that, from March 1915 through June 1916, a total of 876 miles of road had been under OPR supervision and “had not been closed to traffic at any point, even in the winter months,”[3] and by the adoption of the OPR maintenance methods by many other counties not on the Washington–Atlanta route.
Among these last was a group of 13 counties in North Carolina which joined with the State Highway Commission in 1916 to petition for OPR supervision over a proposed Central Highway from Morehead City to Statesville, about 338 miles. The OPR assigned two engineers to this project until the United States’ entry into the European war made it necessary to withdraw them.
The Problems of Road Management
The OPR’s four road construction demonstration teams could fill only a fraction of the requests for object lesson roads. However, in many cases what was needed was not so much a demonstration road as good advice from a road expert. After 1904 Page began detailing experienced engineers, upon request, as consultants to counties to get them started properly on their road programs. These assignments, each lasting from 2 days to a week, covered every conceivable aspect of road engineering and management and occupied most of the time of the OPR special agents.
In time, Page and his aides came to realize that advising the counties on specific road problems did little to improve the overall competence of road management, Therefore, in 1908, the OPR began a more comprehensive approach which is best described in Page’s own words:
