1880s, well before the general availability of cars and

1880s, well before the general availability of cars and trucks. The bicycle was extremely popular then, providing people with inexpensive mobility for the first time, but there was nowhere to ride outside of cities. Lobbying by the League of American Wheelmen and others caused an Office of Road Inquiry to be formed in 1893 within the U.S. Department of Agriculture to look into road matters (this group eventually became the U.S. Department of TYansportation). And in Virginia, the Virginia Highway Commission was created in 1906 (this group eventually became today’s Commonwealth Transportation Board) as cars and trucks became more prevalent.

One of the original intents of the federal government’s transportation effort was to aid rural areas in improving farm-tomarket roads, but this concept was soon sideswiped and left in the ditch by those who saw how money could be made off of road improvements. Bankers, developers, real estate agents, the automobile manufacturers, oil companies, chambers of commerce, the same people behind sprawl today, all jumped on the bandwagon to build tourist highways instead of farm-tomarket roads. Land speculation boomed, especially in southern states, with Florida leading the way. This was also the era of named highways: the Lincoln Highway, the Dixie Highway, the Andrew Jackson Highway, the National Highway, and, of course, the Robert E. Lee Highway.

The latter, Lee Highway, is of interest to Rappahannock County as few people in the county realize that Lee Highway rims from New York City to San Francisco. Nor that its route through Virginia was first proposed to be via Winchester instead through Rappahannock County to Luray. More about the county and Lee Highway later.

Getting back to the use of certain words, much is linked to legislation.

For example, the federal gov