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By Don Audette
Rappahannock News Writer
Rappahannock County in 1900-1919 was participating in a nation-wide effort to get the United States “out of the mud.” Local and county governments had spent over 100 years in road building, with little to show for it.
Now, state governments and the federal government were under increasing pressure to do something about it, but local rights and state rights caused states and the federal government to take a slow, judicious approach.
At the national level, an Office of Road Inquiry (ORI) was formed in 1893 within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but it stuck to investigative and educational matters, building short stretches of “object-lesson” roads in certain towns and fcities, sending out “Good Roads Trains” with l/12thsized sample road sections, and supervising various road conventions.
A Virginia State Highway Commission, created in 1906, used a similar hands-off approach. If counties Wanted help, engineers were available to provide information and advice. The initiative had to come from the local level.
Advancing the cause of more federal and state action was the “Good Roads” movement sweeping the country. National organizations, such as the American Road Builders’ Association, the American Automobile Association, and the American Highways Association, increasingly advocated “trunk” roads and national highways - roads that ran from coast-to-coast, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, or between population centers.
In Virginia, the “Good Roads” movement saw the formation of the Virginia Good Roads Association and the Virginia Road Builders’ Association. Similar groups
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