The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways

by Earl Swift

  Another example, which I alluded to a few pages back: Along 750 miles of busy I-70 in the Midwest, engineers are studying whether dedicated truck lanes might improve safety and help highways last longer. Beefing up just the lanes that carry heavier vehicles could enable states and feds to spend less on those for cars alone.

  Necessary though they might be, such programs don't come close to covering the gap between highway spending and need. "We've got a great asset that changed the way Americans live, but we have struggled almost from the time it was built to maintain that system," Missouri's Rahn said. "Ultimately, it will require an increase in resources."

  Where will the money come from? One possible answer is to swap the gas tax for one based on miles driven, rather than fuel consumed—it promises to better reflect a motorist's actual use of, and wear on, the highways. An Oregon study showed that such a tax could be charged during fueling stops with minimal fuss. A computer chip in the car might communicate with the pump, say, to calculate how far you've driven since your last fill-up, and your tax could be assessed and collected on the spot. Fair as the idea seems, it raises some nettlesome privacy issues; not everyone is thrilled at the notion that Big Brother may have another means of tracking your movements.

  Even more ambitious is "congestion pricing," which would require motorists to pay for the pleasure of using certain key routes according to market forces—more when demand is higher, less when the traffic's light. Such systems would rely on electronic devices carried aboard each vehicle, eliminating the hassle of tollbooths and enabling road officials to adjust rates by the quarter, the month, or even several times an hour.

  Both strategies hold promise because they would be unaffected by advances in automotive technology, which over time will further erode income from the gas tax. Fuel efficiency is bound to improve by leaps in the coming years, as automakers react to the declining oil supply; before long, we'll be compelled to develop a wholesale replacement for gasoline.

  We'd better hope we do, anyway. Because without alternative fuels, we may see the interstates morph from the world's biggest highway system into its biggest white elephant.

  Men in the auto business have talked about the appeal of alternative fuels since before World War I, when the prospect of the world's running out of oil seemed preposterously remote. It should come as no surprise, blessed as he was with a nose for future profit, that among the enthusiastic seekers of a gasoline substitute was Carl Fisher.

  In June 1914, Fisher, busy at the time with the Dixie Highway and Florida and a blizzard of side projects, was visited in Indianapolis by one John Andrews, an amateur inventor from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and, in Fisher's estimation, a "poor, apparently ignorant Portuguese." Andrews told Fisher he had developed a water-based fuel that could be made for under 2 cents a gallon. "We put the material in an auto," Fisher wrote, "and it tested up in one case about twenty percent more mileage than a gallon of gasoline would give."

  Fisher asked Andrews to return the following week for more extensive tests. In the meantime, he wrote his automotive buddies, among them Henry Joy and Roy Chapin, to offer them a piece of the action. "If they have the goods," he wrote, "and certainly the demonstration made today looks like they might have it, they have one of the most wonderful inventions that has ever been made, and certainly one that can be cashed in on for I don't know how many millions."

  The next round of tests produced, in Fisher's words, "one of the most remarkable things that I have ever seen." In front of "a half dozen shrewd men to watch every move that was made," Andrews combined twenty-four gallons of water, about 4 cents' worth of naphthalene, and six ounces of unidentified liquid to distill five gallons of substitute fuel. They ran it through a six-cylinder Cole; it got better mileage than with regular gas. They put it into a six-cylinder National; not only did the car's mileage improve, but its top speed jumped from fifty-six miles per hour to sixty.

  What were the mixture's secret ingredients? Andrews swore that they could be found in any grocery store, but beyond that, he wouldn't say; in fact, Fisher reported that when the "Portuguese" went to Washington to patent his invention, he purposely omitted a key ingredient out of fear his formula would be stolen, and was consequently sent packing by patent officials. Fisher was sympathetic. "It is only a few years ago," he noted, "that they refused to issue a patent to Wright for a flying machine." He sent his own patent attorney to McKeesport, and the man returned "just as bad a nut on the thing as I am," he wrote Chapin, "and he is a level-headed man with a great deal of experience in fool inventions and fool ideas."

  Fisher nonetheless practiced due diligence. Before opening his wallet he wanted to be sure that he could make the stuff in bulk, and solicited Joy and Chapin to share the cost of building a still. "This is purely a speculation," he warned them. "It may make a lot of money. It may be a big fake."

  That fall, as automaker Howard C. Marmon built the still in Indianapolis, Fisher drew up a business model for what he called Zolene. His company would make stills of various sizes and license them to agents scattered around the country, who would have exclusive rights to the machinery and formula in their territories. The company would collect rent on the stills and a royalty on every gallon of Zolene sold. "Every test so far is satisfactory," he advised Chapin in mid-November. "We get two more miles per gallon from our fuel than [from] any other gasoline; we get from twenty to thirty degrees less heat; we get from ten to fifteen percent more power; and no smoke nor carbon—What more do you want?"

  How embarrassing for Fisher, and frustrating for the rest of us, that it wasn't to be. His hired chemists couldn't decipher all of Zolene's secrets but found that it contained a substantial amount of benzene, making it too expensive to compete with run-of-the-mill gas. Still, it did seem to produce more power than standard fuel, which no one could explain, and it did leave an engine spotless.

  "Andrews either continually uses chemicals of which we know nothing or some other means which none of us are able to catch, in order to make both ends meet," Fisher told Chapin. He put extra men on the task of watching Andrews at work; when the inventor realized he was under study, "he decided he wanted to go home," and an exasperated Fisher "told him to go ahead and go home, to Hell or wherever he wanted to go."

  So ended their experiment. Fisher was deeply agitated by the experience, on which he blamed a flare-up of heart trouble that year. Not only had it wasted his money and time, it left him with tantalizing questions; as he wrote in a December letter, "The thing is not exactly a fake, Mr. Joy." Later, he reminded Chapin that Andrews's invention had worked—it just hadn't done so at an attractive price.

  Fisher predicted that Andrews would attempt to peddle his invention elsewhere, and sure enough, in 1917 the inventor turned up at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to demonstrate Zolene in a motorboat. The yard's commanding officer was astonished and had him repeat the feat with salt water the following day. The boat's engine fired eagerly.

  No sooner had he whetted the navy's appetite than John Andrews vanished. A reporter who followed him to McKeesport found his home in disarray and minus its occupant, and every attempt to track him down met with failure. Speculation about his fate circulated for years.

  Not until a quarter century later did another reporter manage to locate him. Andrews insisted that he really had invented a fuel made from water. It had really worked. It involved no trickery.

  But after so many years, he said, he had forgotten the formula.

  Acknowledgments

  THIS BOOK, like all books, is the offspring of a great many parents, and this one more than most. Its completion relied on a host of strangers who lent me their time, labor, and expertise with little expectation that they would benefit from the transaction.

  I owe thanks, first, to Richard Weingroff, the Federal Highway Administration's unoffi cial historian and a font of data, wisdom, and encouragement. Richard has helped a legion of journalists and historians to untangle pieces of America's highway past over the years
, but in helping me this generous man outdid himself. He arranged for my research at the Department of Transportation Library, dug up and shared obscure documents that settled small but important questions, and read the fi rst draft of my manuscript—no small task, even without the one hundred typed pages of feedback he off ered. In short, he made my project his own, and it is the better for it in countless ways, big and small.

  I'm indebted to others who helped me ferret out the facts that form the story's bones. Valerie Coleman and her colleagues at Texas A&M's Cushing Memorial Library graciously put up with my rooting through the papers of Thomas MacDonald and Frank Turner. Michele Christian at the Iowa State University Archives helped me unearth the Chief's college past. Kevin Bailey at the Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library, Paul McCardell of the Baltimore Sun, and the folks at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, put vital pieces of the past into my hands, as did the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, Ames Historical Society, Poweshiek County Historical and Genealogical Society, and Fort Worth Public Library.

  I have been lucky, over the past twenty-plus years, to count Robert Wojtowicz of Old Dominion University as my friend; that he happens to be Lewis Mumford's literary executor is pure providence. Robert guided me in my exploration of Mumford's life, supplied me with Mumford's books, and oft en picked up the check for lunch, to boot.

  Many people with personal connections to the narrative shared their time, recollections, and mementos with me, among them the Chief's great-granddaughter, Lynda Weidinger; Frank Turner's daughter, Beverly Cooke, and sons Marvin and Millard "Jim" Turner; Joe Wiles's widow, Esther Wiles, and his daughters, Carmen Artis and Carole Gibson; Wiles's longtime neighbor, Mary Rosemond; Baltimoreans Art Cohen, Stu Wechsler, George Tyson, Jim Dilts, and Tom Ward; and Turner associates Kevin Heunue, Alan Pisarski, Tom Deen, Peter Koltnow, and Francis Francois. Mark Reutter and Andrew Giguere provided me with their research into Baltimore's Road Wars, enabling me to piggyback on their hard work.

  My research required a lot of driving—about fifteen thousand miles' worth in the past couple of years — which would have been tough to pull off without the help of Anne Evans, April Cobb, and Michele Brady of Thrifty Inc. in Norfolk; Albert and Maritza Delarosa, Kenny and Barbara Rossen, and Mark Peterson and Greta Pratt, all of whom rode herd on my daughter while I was road-tripping; and Mike and Elizabeth Semel, old friends who off ered me meals and a bed on my forays to D.C. My dad, E. V. Swift of Bedford, Texas, not only put me up on my trips to Texas but did some initial scouting for traces of Frank Turner's childhood.

  At the Virginian-Pilot, my professional home for twenty-two years, Denis Finley, Maria Carrillo, and Lon Wagner engineered a leave of absence I needed to research the book, so earning my everlasting gratitude. Maria also read a chunk of early draft, as did former Pilot reporter Tom "The Pink Badger" Holden. A 2008 assignment from Parade provided me with much of the postscript, for which I have the diabolically talented Lamar Graham to thank. My brother, Kevin Swift of St. Louis, drew the fine-looking maps that accompany the text and remained in reasonably good humor throughout my edits.

  I thank my agent, David Black, who always has my back, and whose unflagging efforts on my behalfmade this book happen; Eamon Dolan, late of Houghton Miffl in, who fi rst suggested I take on the project; and my editors at Houghton Miffl in Harcourt, Andrea Schulz and Tom Bouman, with whose guidance I've chiseled a mountain of facts into a svelte (relatively speaking) story.

  Finally, I owe a lasting debt to the friends who helped keep me sane during the three years that I devoted to this beast, among them Mark Mobley, Mike D'Orso, Fred Kirsch, Rhett Walton, my parents, and Lilly Marlene Lindenberry Swift.

  Special thanks go to my daughter, Saylor, who accompanied me on two epic navigations of the continent and a slew of shorter research trips, who saw her summers and spring breaks hijacked by my need to dig up more detail, who consequently knows more about the interstates than any teenager on the planet, and who has proved a festive traveling companion, just the same; and my smart, patient, and beautiful fiancée, Amy Walton, who every day thrills and inspires me, and with whom I look forward to traveling millions of miles of good road in the years to come.

  Notes

  Abbreviations

  America's Highways: America's Highways, 177–1976 (Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration, 1976).

  Annals: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (journal).

  Archives: Papers of the Bureau of Public Roads, National Archives II, College Park, MD.

  Bentley: Papers of Henry Joy and Roy Chapin, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

  DOT: Department of Transportation Library, Washington, DC.

  ENR: Engineering News-Record.

  FCT: Papers of Francis Cutler Turner, Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University.

  Fisher biographies: Jane Fisher, Fabulous Hoosier: A Story of American Achievement (New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1947); Mark Foster, Castles in the Sand: The Life and Times of Carl Graham Fisher (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000); Jerry M. Fisher, The Pacesetter: The Untold Story of Carl G. Fisher (Fort Bragg, CA: Lost Coast Press, 1998).

  History interviews: Transcripts of interviews that Francis Turner gave to researchers following his retirement from government service and included in FCT: January and February 1986 sessions with Darwin Stolzenbach for an AASHTO interstate history project; a March 21, 1988, session with John'T. Greenwood for the Public Works Historical Society; a February 1988 session with Howard Rosen; and another session, interviewer unidentified, in the late 1980s.

  ISU: Special collections, Parks Library, Iowa State University, Ames.

  Langsdale: Papers associated with Baltimore's Road War among the special collections of Langsdale Library, University of Baltimore, among them those of the Relocation Action Movement, Movement Against Destruction, the Southeast Council Against the Road, and the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill.

  Mertz: "Origins of the Interstate," an unpublished manuscript prepared by longtime FHWA official W. Lee Mertz, available on the Web at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/origin.htm.

  NYT: New York Times.

  Sun: The Baltimore "Sunpapers"—the Sun and the Evening Sun.

  TAC: The American City (magazine).

  THM: Papers of Thomas Harris MacDonald, Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University.

  US News: U.S. News and World Report.

  Part I: Out of the Mud

  page

  [>] Such was the world ...: Fisher biographies.

  [>] And mixed with the mud ...: Clay McShane, "Gelded Age Boston," The New England Quarterly 74, no. 2 (June 2001).

  [>] Crossing a street ...: Martin Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform and the Environment (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981); and James J. Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).

  [>] So it was that in October 1893 ...: America's Highways; Mertz; Richard F. Weingroff, "Portrait of a General: General Roy Stone," http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/stone.cfm (accessed July 2, 2010).

  [>] Of Carl Fisher's many adventures ...: Both the Jane Fisher and Mark Foster biographies declare that Carl Fisher and Barney Oldfield drove home from New York.

  [>] In fact, so few autoists ...: Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); and Axel Madsen, The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

  [>] That October, automaker ...: Roy Chapin's drive from Detroit to New York is often described as having taken nine days. I went with Chapin's own account, included in a telegram he sent to "Olds Motor Works" on November 5, 1901 (Bentley). See also "Motor Touring Influenced Campaign for Good Roads," NYT, January 10, 1926.

  [>] One of Fisher's favorite schemes ...: Fisher biographies; Horseless Age, August 20, 1902.

  [>] Oldfield
likened racing ...: Bob Zeller, "Before There Was a 500," Car and Driver, May 2003.

  [>] Horseless Age numbered him ...: Horseless Age, July 13, 1904.

  [>] It wasn't speed alone ...: Fisher biographies; conflicting accounts of the accident are well documented at www.firstsuperspeedway.com/articles/category/ 49.

  [>] In 1904, an inventor ...: Fisher biographies; Griffith Borgeson, The Golden Age of the American Racing Car (Warrendale, PA: SAE International, 1997).

  [>] Stuffing metal tanks ...: Foster, Castles in the Sand; "Eleven Hurt in Explosion," NYT, June 7, 1908.

  [>] Rains continued to turn rural roads ...: NYT, daily race coverage, February 2 to March 25, 1908.

  [>] The most common "improvement" ...: Pyke Johnson and Herbert'S. Fairbank, unpublished partial biography of Thomas H. MacDonald (FCT); Charles Livy Whittle, "Highway Construction in Massachusetts," Popular Science, May 1897; Nelson P. Lewis, "Modern City Roadways," Popular Science, March 1900; Charles M. Upham, "The Last Two Decades in Highway Design, Construction and Maintenance," TAC, September 1930; and Dan McNichol, The Roads That Built America (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2006).

  [>] At the end of 1909 ...: Thomas MacDonald, "The History and Development of Road Building in the United States," a paper delivered before the American Society of Civil Engineers on October 6, 1926 (ISU).

  [>] In the fall of 1908 ...: Fisher biographies; Zeller, "Before There Was a 500"; and NYT prerace coverage of February 8, July 11, and August 15, 1909.

  [>] A three-day extravaganza ...: Horseless Age, August 25, 1909; "Two in Racing Auto Killed Before 10,000" and "Record Breaking Contests," NYT, August 20, 1909; "Three More Killed in Auto Carnival," NYT, August 22, 1909; and "Discusses Dangers of Track Racing," NYT, September 5, 1909.