From mud to 12,000 miles of pavement, Oklahoma roads traveled far in a century
NewsOK
BY DAVID ZIZZO
Published: March 29, 2011
Dirt, gravel or mud.
A century ago in Oklahoma, that was the choice of road when going for a drive. If you had a choice at all.
You had worn cattle trails, old military roads and a patchwork of roads scratched out by townships and counties, if you could call frequently mud-rutted paths without drainage ditches “roads.”
“There were no highways really to speak of,” said Michael Dean, spokesman for the Oklahoma History Center.
That also was when the new state decided things must change. In 1911, the Legislature created a state Transportation Department with meager funding of a $1 annual charge on the few autos in the state. The agency would eventually help guide a boom in road building that would lead to the 12,000 miles of paved roads the state has today.
The Transportation Department’s first commissioner was Col. Sidney Suggs, an Ardmore newspaper publisher and proponent of the “good roads” movement. In a speech recorded in the 1960s that Dean, a connoisseur of everything vintage, dug from the History Center’s audio archives, E.K. Gaylord, editor and publisher of The Oklahoman, described Suggs’ method of road campaigning... FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Tue, March 29, 2011
by John Cox