The Good Roads Movement in Missouri

Two convoys of army trucks left St. Louis and Kansas City on September 27, 1920. Their mission was to travel the state and encourage citizens to “lift Missouri out of the mud” by voting “yes” on a constitutional amendment allowing the state to issue a $60 million bond, the largest in its history, to upgrade thousands of miles of muddy, often unnavigable roads. For nearly a month the procession went off without a hitch. Soldiers played baseball games with locals and cooked “bean suppers,” while speakers talked about the benefits of improved roads. 

As the St. Louis convoy departed Carthage on October 21 for its final stop in Kansas City, it found itself mired in the mud just north of the town of Jasper. After a heavy rain began to fall, the roads in Barton County, which provided the only path to Kansas City, became “submerged for a distance of ten miles.” Hilly and made from dirt, the roads would have been difficult to pass in normal conditions. After several stalled days, the convoy gave up; soldiers took the train back to St. Louis, while the trucks returned on top of flat cars. The irony of this situation was likely not lost on Missouri’s advocates of road reform.

The campaign to lift Missouri out of the mud represented one part of the national Good Roads Movement that sprouted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While some of the earliest support for road improvement came from bicyclists, the movement found adherents among reform politicians, business interests, engineering experts, and, eventually, farmers. Good Roads activists in Missouri and across the United States promised a long list of social and economic benefits: safety improvements, ease of travel, increased commerce, and even the salvation of struggling rural communities. 

Despite these noble goals, the Good Roads Movement in Missouri, as elsewhere, faced considerable headwinds. To build quality roads, advocates argued that state and federal government needed to play a larger role, and experts in road planning and construction would need to staff administrative bodies responsible for road building. However, these aspirations ran up against long-held beliefs in limited government. 

Moreover, rural people often expressed skepticism toward the movement. Many worried they would be forced to shoulder the financial burden of construction, or that the roads would serve the needs of urban residents rather than themselves, bringing crowds of city denizens into the countryside. The Missouri Good Roads Movement was forced to undertake an enormous, years-long campaign to win over farmers and rural voters. By the 1920s, Good Roads activists finally succeeded in convincing Missourians to approve a state and federal roads system and laid the groundwork for a network of roads that better linked them with the rest of the nation.

The Good Roads Movement emerged in no small part because the roads of the United States were overwhelmingly bad. An 1888 report by the US Department of Agriculture called American roads “deficient in every necessary qualification that is an attribute to a good road; in direction, in slope, in shape and service, and most of all, in want of repair.” Missouri roads were no exception. At the turn of the twentieth century, the state had around 110,000 miles of road, of which only 5,000 could be considered “improved” in some way. Responsibility for road construction and repairs fell largely to county governments, which rarely had the necessary resources.

The haphazard character of Missouri roads reflected in part the system used to build and repair them. Like many states during this period, repairs were done based on the “working out” tax. This system required men ages twenty-one to sixty to perform road work for up to a week. One Missouri Good Roads advocate described the system as “a time for local gossip and for story telling . . . Questions of supremacy in running, jumping and wrestling were settled in a practical way. There was also some work on the roads, rarely under skilled direction.” The result was a loose collection of largely unimproved dirt roads. 

Some of the first Missourians to begin challenging this status quo were cyclists. Like many places in the country, Missouri witnessed a bicycle craze in the late nineteenth century as the two-wheeled transport became safer and more affordable. Some estimates placed the number of riders in St. Louis as high as fifty thousand by 1899. The League of American Wheelmen, a nationwide bicycle advocacy group, published its own magazine, Good Roads, with articles in favor of national road improvement legislation; it had a circulation of more than a million in the early 1890s. 

At the national level, the Department of Agriculture established the Office of Road Inquiry (ORI) in 1893. The ORI focused its efforts in part on evaluating the nation’s diffuse network of roads. It also studied various techniques and tools for road building and constructed “object lesson” roads that could be assessed based on strength and resistance to wear. This office was replaced by the Office of Public Roads in 1905 and eventually became the Federal Highway Administration.  

Most action occurred at the state level. Like Good Roaders across the country, Missourians began an effort in 1897 to establish a state highway commission staffed with engineering experts. This campaign grew out of the Good Roads and Public Improvement Association of Missouri, founded in St. Louis in 1897 and led by William H. Moore. Association members, who came primarily from the business, political, and legal worlds, prepared a draft bill for the state legislature that called for a three-person roads commission appointed by the governor to survey the state’s roads and make recommendations for repairs and updates. But the bill failed to gain traction among either legislators or citizens. At a meeting of Buchanan County farmers, it was unanimously opposed. The farmers reportedly stated that “they knew as much about the improvements that are needed on the roads as any commission.” An article in the Moberly Weekly Monitor, meanwhile, attacked the proposed bill in part because it would cost taxpayers money, “whether a rod of stable road is constructed or not.” Finally, a state senator attacked the bill as a project designed by cyclists whose calls for good roads stemmed from “selfish motives.”

Despite the failure of the highway commission bill, Moore continued to advocate for good roads. In 1900 he was elected president of the newly formed National Good Roads Association, which included representatives from thirty-eight states. The group called for each state to appoint a highway commissioner, abolish the working out system, and prepare a statewide road plan.

In 1903, Moore and the National Good Roads Association organized a conference in St. Louis with prominent speakers such as the populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan and Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, both of whom addressed the rural voter. Bryan called good roads “a matter of justice to the people who live in the country.” Improved roads, he argued, would allow the farmer to “hold his crop and market it at the most favorable opportunity.”  For his part, Roosevelt highlighted growing concerns about population decline in rural America. The president talked about how poor roads and bad weather made “liquid morasses” that prevented rural people from trading and socializing. Under such conditions, “you have got to expect that there will be a great many young people . . . who won’t find farm life attractive” and would leave for the cities.  

Despite these efforts, very few roads had been built or repaired in Missouri by the early 1900s, and responsibility for them still rested largely with local and county governments. The fortunes of the movement in Missouri began to shift, however, during the administration of Democrat Joseph Folk, a reform politician who served as governor from 1905 to 1909. One of Folk’s first attempts to improve the state’s roads was to call for a convention in Chillicothe in September 1906. The convention was organized by a local farmer named Gregory Lawson. Perhaps to contrast Lawson with those farmers who did not yet support the movement, a pro–Good Roads newspaper article described him as a “twentieth century” farmer who was “intelligent, up-to-date.” Convention attendees, who numbered in the thousands, listened to politicians and engineers give speeches such as “The Value of Expert Supervision in Road Work” and watched small stretches of modernized roads get built. Attendees also voted in favor of a set of resolutions to extend state aid for road construction to counties, and to create a state highway engineering office.

While the Chillicothe convention attracted significant attention, the threat of losing a popular federal program may have done even more to advance the Good Roads Movement in Missouri. In 1896, the US Post Office began delivering mail to the homes of rural residents. The program proved popular: a decade after its inception, letter carriers reportedly had delivered more than a billion pieces of mail to rural homes. Home delivery depended, however, on reliable roads, and Missouri’s had hardly improved. In April 1906, the Post Office discontinued at least one Missouri route “on account of bad roads” and suggested that others might be closed as well. These threats continued at least through January 1907.   

The Chillicothe convention and dismay over losing rural free delivery undoubtedly influenced Missouri’s General Assembly, which soon passed a law establishing the office of the state highway engineer. The legislature also created a “state-aid” program with a budget of $500,000, which would be used to match funds spent on road construction by the counties. While the initiative for road building still rested with the counties, the legislature had expanded the role of the state government through expertise and increased funding.

Folk’s successor, the Republican Herbert Hadley, also proved to be an advocate for good roads. Hadley’s administration coincided with a rapid growth in automobile ownership in Missouri. The first cars had appeared on Missouri’s roads in the early 1890s. In 1911 more than sixteen thousand vehicles were registered with the state, and by the end of Hadley’s term in 1913 they numbered more than thirty-eight thousand. Nationwide, almost eight million cars were being driven on American roads. This expansion of car ownership coincided with the construction of the first concrete road sample in Detroit in 1909.

In 1911, the Hadley administration developed a plan for a cross-state highway between St. Louis and Kansas City. In collaboration with the state’s first highway engineer, Curtis Hill, Hadley appointed a commission to study three proposed routes and then tour those sites. The possibility of having the cross-state highway go through their county apparently encouraged Missourians to quickly improve their roads ahead of the tour. 

On August 2, the committee held a hearing at the Jefferson Theater in Jefferson City to decide which route would be chosen. Sixteen hundred people reportedly sat for seven hours “in stifling heat, under the spell of Missouri oratory.” The “central” route was ultimately chosen. This path connected St. Louis and Kansas City via Columbia and crossed the Missouri River near Arrow Rock. It was given the name “Old Trails Road.” While lack of funding prevented its completion, the plan did spur road upgrades and laid the groundwork for what would become US Highway 40, the forerunner of Interstate 70. 

Steady progress continued under Hadley’s successor, the Democrat Elliot Major, who took office in January 1913. Major’s greatest accomplishment for Missouri roads was to establish the Missouri State Highway Department during his first year in office. This new department replaced the office of the state engineer and slightly expanded upon its roles: the department could now declare certain roads to be “state roads,” and could supply counties with tools for road construction. The state also made additional funding available for dirt road grading. By August 1913, twenty thousand miles of road were being graded, and within a year, Missouri had fifty-four thousand miles of improved dirt roads. 

While these new road policies advanced the goals of the Good Roads Movement, funding for improvements and new construction remained low until passage of the Federal Aid Road Act in 1916. The bill came to life in part because of the efforts of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), formed in 1914. Founded by representatives from highway departments across the nation, the AASHO lobbied the federal government for additional aid. Congressman Dorsey Shackleford of St. Louis, who served on the House Committee on Roads, proved critical to this effort. After failing to get a federal road law passed in 1912, Shackleford spent the next several years campaigning for the federal government to act. Under the 1916 bill, sometimes called the Shackleford bill, $75 million in federal aid became available to states for rural post roads, with the requirement that states furnish half the cost and establish a state highway department to direct road construction projects. 

To prepare for the influx of federal funds, Missouri passed what became known as the Hawes Road Law in 1917. The bill was the work of state legislator Harry Hawes of St. Louis and Democratic Governor Frederick Gardner.  An ardent supporter of the Good Roads Movement, Hawes found an eager partner in Gardner, who had focused his 1916 gubernatorial campaign in part on “establishing and building a state system of good roads.” In his inaugural address, Gardner called on Congress to pass “within 30 days” a road law that would create a new state highway commission with “broad powers” to control the “construction of state roads.”  

The Hawes bill ultimately took three months instead of thirty days to pass, but it yielded a road law that conformed to Gardner’s plea. The new highway commission was to be staffed by four people (two Democrats and two Republicans) who would be responsible for planning a state highway system consisting of thirty-five hundred miles of road. Beyond the state system, the department also established construction standards for all types of roads within the state. In 1919, the state passed the McCullough-Morgan Amendments, which increased the state highway system to six thousand miles and promised each county at least two state roads no less than fifty miles in length.

With an infusion of federal and state aid, road construction expanded throughout the state, but these policies fell short in a couple of key regards. The federal road law, for example, did not provide any guidance about how federal money should be used. A connected, nationwide system of roads would have to wait. Additionally, while funding did increase, counties were still responsible for a large chunk of the cost of construction and maintenance, and many struggled to raise sufficient money. 

This gap between ambition and funding led to a campaign to finally “lift Missouri out of the mud.” This was the slogan for Amendment 6, a 1920 ballot initiative that, through a bond, would pump $60 million into improving and constructing roads. It echoed the rallying cry of John Malang, superintendent of the highway commission and a Missouri Good Roads advocate from Jasper County, who gave an address titled “Lift Missouri Out of the Mud” at the 1915 Old Trails Road Association meeting in Columbia. Governor Gardner called it “the biggest proposition ever placed before the people of Missouri and far more reaching in its beneficial results.” Passing the bond, he argued, was necessary “for the welfare and happiness of the people” and to “solve the serious transportation problems which now threaten to halt the development of the country.” 

The campaign to pass the amendment was led by the Missouri Good Roads Federation. Harry Hawes served as its president. Other members included Malang and J. M. Lowe, a Jackson County judge whose involvement in the Good Roads Movement dated to the 1890s. Crucially, the federation drew the support of Missouri’s bankers. W. Frank Carter, the Chamber of Commerce president and former vice president of Mercantile Trust, served as the chair of the federation’s finance committee and promised to canvass the state’s financiers to raise $100,000 in support of the bond.

The federation undertook a massive statewide campaign. Aside from the army truck tour that ended in the mud, bond supporters distributed 850,000 leaflets and made more than three thousand speeches. Rhetoric in favor of the bond reflected all the arguments developed over the preceding decades: roads would increase attendance at churches and schools, “shorten the distance from farm to market,” and “keep the young man and woman on the farm.” Most important, all these benefits would “cost you nothing.” This last refrain, designed to assuage the fears of cost-conscious Missourians, was not exactly true. According to Gardner, the bond would be paid for through a mixture of automobile licensing fees and fees from the registration of corporations in the state.

The intensity of the campaign no doubt reflected the seriousness with which supporters of the bond saw the issue. Underneath their zeal was perhaps a certain anxiety as well. An article about the bond in the Eldon Advertiser noted that only two of the fifty-four amendments previously submitted to Missourians had been approved by voters. Moreover, after decades of advocacy by Good Roads supporters, a deep skepticism of the project may have lingered among rural voters. Another article on the bond described a feeling “that now prevails in Missouri that only owners of pleasure automobiles are concerned in having the state adopt the bond issue.” Farmers also apparently worried that only “a few big roads” would receive funding, while many rural roads would languish. These concerns reflected a broader, national conflict over the purpose of roads: should they be for local usage, or for cross-country travel? While politicians, businessmen, and roadwork experts may have been stalwart supporters of good roads, uncertainty prevailed among many voters.

The actual vote that November seems to have reflected these tensions. The amendment passed with just over 52 percent of the voters giving their assent. Most of its support came from the state’s urban areas, without which it would have failed.

Arguments continued to flare during the debates over what would become the signal achievement of the Good Roads Movement in Missouri: the Centennial Road Law of 1921. Lawmakers initiated a special session to devise a new road system and plan how to spend the influx of cash from Amendment 6. Very quickly, however, a contentious battle broke out between supporters of a more centralized state system of road construction and hard roads, and those who wanted mainly farm-to-market roads built by county governments.

Debate over the law proved acrimonious. “Hard roaders” viewed their quest as a virtuous one that would finally bring Missouri into the modern era, while “dirt roaders” worried the new system would ignore the needs of rural people in favor of roads that served urban residents and tourists. Legislators in both chambers of the General Assembly fought for more than a month, trading barbs and bills that had little chance of passing. Republican Governor Arthur Hyde, elected in 1920, castigated lawmakers that the “matter is not open for debate” and that a statewide system must be established. Debate continued, however, as lawmakers wrangled over how much to pay highway engineering officials and how to spread the $60 million around.

Finally, at the end of July, the intervention of an unknown figure (possibly either House Speaker Samuel O’Fallon or Hawes) brought the two feuding sides together, and a bill was passed. The law took power over state roads from the counties and lodged it in the hands of a state highway commission. Crucially, the new law split the $60 million roughly in half for urban and rural roads. The governor signed the bill on August 4, 1921.

In the years following the passage of the Centennial Road Law, Missouri road construction began to boom. Within five years, more than $100 million had been spent on building a system of state roads and bridges. By 1931, seventy-five hundred miles of road had been built in every county in the state. Moreover, Missouri’s administrative capacity in road building grew as well. The highway department counted more than eighteen hundred employees who were supervising about six hundred road projects.

The Good Roads Movement made a lasting impact on Missouri’s and the nation’s transportation network. Its legacy includes, most famously, Route 66, which Good Roads supporters in Missouri played a key role in designing. One such figure was B. H. Piepmeier, the first chief highway engineer to be appointed after the passage of the Centennial Road Law. As Route 66 was being planned in the mid-1920s, Piepmeier was central to designing the route that would eventually stretch from Chicago to Los Angeles by way of Missouri.