The Father of U.S. Roads
Long before Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower put the U.S. Interstate System on the map, so to speak, there was another man devoted to the effort. He stood for safer roads long before the major push for motor vehicle transportation. His name was Horatio Earle. Now regarded as the father of U.S. roads, his goal was to make cycling safer.
According to a Department of Transportation blog, as a renowned bicycle enthusiast who put tremendous effort toward safety, he decided to dispel a common misconception later in life by stating: “I often hear now-a-days, the automobile instigated good roads; that the automobile is the parent of good roads. Well, the truth is, the bicycle is the father of the good roads movement in this country.”
Born in Mt. Holly, Vermont in 1855, his early professional career consisted of selling farm equipment. In 1889, he relocated his family to Detroit, where he began developing agricultural tools and selling them.
He became a tremendous proponent of cycling and as such stepped into the role of president of the League of American Wheelmen. When leading the organization he began urging the state of Michigan to build modern and safer roads and streets “and vowed to conquer impediments to travel such as sand, clay and ‘the Mighty Monarch Mud, who roles the road to the exclusion of everyone.”
He also organized the very first International Good Roads Conference in 1900, where he demonstrated cutting-edge road building techniques in Port Huron, Michigan.
By 1902, he mobilized to form American Road Makers, which was renamed the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), in which he advocated for federal legislation to create a “Capital Connecting Government Highway” intended to connect state capitals to each other and every capital with the U.S. Capital in Washington.
In 1892, under Earle’s leadership, the League had put tremendous effort in lobbying the Michigan legislature to establish a state highway commission – and they succeeded. As a result, Michigan’s State Highway Department (now known as the Michigan Department of Transportation) was born in 1905 with a staff of five, Earle as the commissioner and an annual operating budget of $10,000, according to the DOT blog.
A milestone was reached in his efforts, when the nation’s first mile of concrete rural highway was completed in Detroit in 1909.
Through his lifetime of effort paving the way for road safety, he earned the moniker of “Good Roads Earl” and was inducted into the ARTBA Transportation Development Foundation’s Hall of Fame as an Industry Leader in 2014.
The current network of roads was only made possible by people like Horatio Earle who were passionate about transportation – and safety.