Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of this text.
The cover image has been created for this text, and is in the public domain.
HIGHWAYS
AND
HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION
© Major Hamilton Maxwell
© Underwood and Underwood
STORM KING HIGHWAY
A Great Engineering Project Along the Hudson between Cornwall and West Point, N. Y.
HIGHWAYS
AND
HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION
BY
GEORGE R. CHATBURN, A.M., C.E.
Professor of Applied Mechanics and Machine Design
Lecturer on Highway Engineering
The University of Nebraska
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1923, by
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
[v]
PREFACE
The following pages on Highways and Highway Transportationdo not pretend to be an exhaustive treatise on thesubject, but rather a glimpse of the vast development of thehumble road and its office as an agency for transportation.Possibly the grandeur of the mountains is best appreciatedby one who lives among them, who climbs their acclivitousheights, who daily experiences their power and majesty,and measures their magnitude by grim muscular exertion.But, even so, it would be foolish to contend that he whogets his information from the seat of a Pullman car receivesno benefit from the hasty glimpse, or, that his imaginationis not quickened and cultured by the experience. In writingthis book, then, I have had constantly in mind themyriads of people who have not the time, and possibly notthe facilities, to search the pages of the literature of thepast for the origin and development, or to work out theirpresent importance, of our amplification of roads and ofroad uses. It is felt that many of these people laudablydesire a conversational knowledge of the origin, evolutionand present status of highway transportation, even thoughit be glimpsed by a very rapid passage through a very largesubject.
The primary objects have therefore been, to sketch brieflyand simply the development of the transportation systemsof the United States, to indicate their importance andmutual relations, to present some practical methods usedin the operation of highway transport and to make occasionalsuggestions for the betterment of the road as a usablemachine for the benefit and pleasure of mankind.
Any observations made or conclusions drawn are purelypersonal. I entered into and have carried on the workentirely unbiase