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Author: William Kaszynski
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2000-01-01
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780786408221
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMinnesota-based writer and photographer Kazynski traces the transformation of the US from a network of places connected by rutted wagon trails to a maze of highways connected to other highways. He describes and illustrates road and bridge construction and the new roadside culture that threw up motels, restaurants, gas stations, and scenic perspectives.
Author: Robert W. Poole
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2018-08-03
Total Pages: 376
ISBN-13: 022655760X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA transportation expert makes a provocative case for changing the nation’s approach to highways, offering “bold, innovative thinking on infrastructure” (Rick Geddes, Cornell University). Americans spend hours every day sitting in traffic. And the roads they idle on are often rough and potholed, with exits, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges in terrible disrepair. According to transportation expert Robert Poole, this congestion and deterioration are outcomes of the way America manages its highways. Our twentieth-century model overly politicizes highway investment decisions, short-changing maintenance and often investing in projects whose costs exceed their benefits. In Rethinking America’s Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities—like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully-reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways.
Author: Tom Lewis
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780140267716
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Divided Highways, Tom Lewis tells the monumental story of the largest engineered structure ever built: the Interstate Highway System. Here is one of the great untold tales of American enterprise, recounted entirely through the stories of the human beings who thought up, mapped out, poured, paved - and tried to stop - the Interstates. Conceived and spearheaded by Thomas "the Chief" MacDonald, the iron-willed bureaucrat from the muddy farmlands of Iowa who rose to unrivaled power, the highway system was propelled forward through the pathbreaking efforts of brilliant engineers, argued over by politicians of every ideological and moral stripe, reviled by the citizens whose lives it devastated, and lauded as the greatest public works project in U.S. history.
Author: Jim Lilliefors
Publisher: James Lilliefors
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 254
ISBN-13: 9781555910730
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDocuments the author's trip along Highway 50 from Ocean City, Maryland to Sacramento, California.
Author: Stephen H. Provost
Publisher:
Published: 2020-02-16
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13: 9781949971101
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRelive the history of the American highway from its origins in the era of the covered wagon through the age of the interstate. Illustrated with more than 400 images from roads across the country, "Yesterday's Highways" takes you back to the old auto trails that paved the way for the first federal highway system. You'll visit the diners, motels, filling stations and quirky roadside haunts of yesteryear. From White Castle to Howard Johnson's, learn about how the American road served up burgers and coffee and blue-plate specials to weary truckers and vacationing families. Journey back to the age of auto camps and revisit the time when mom-and-pop motel courts ruled the side of the road. Before the advent of off-ramps and car-pool lanes, highways zigzagged through downtowns across the heartland, turning at stop signs and following rail lines. Cars chugged along at 15 mph over gravel roads and narrow, concrete ribbons with dozens of hairpin turns. Drivers were treated to barn ads and billboards and Burma-Shave signs. The Lincoln Highway. Route 66. Highway 99. El Camino Real. The Great Valley Road. Travel back in time and experience what made these roads and so many others the lifeblood of the American experience.
Author: William Least Heat-Moon
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2012-04-03
Total Pages: 458
ISBN-13: 0316218545
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.
Author: Roger Pickenpaugh
Publisher: Kent State University
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781606353974
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe story of America's first government-sponsored highway The National Road was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, this 620-mile road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was the main avenue to the West. Roger Pickenpaugh's comprehensive account is based on detailed archival research into documents that few scholars have examined, including sources from the National Archives, and details the promotion, construction, and use of this crucially important thoroughfare. America's First Interstate looks at the road from the perspective of westward expansion, stagecoach travel, freight hauling, livestock herding, and politics of construction as the project goes through changing presidential administrations. Pickenpaugh also describes how states assumed control of the road once the US government chose to abandon it, including the charging of tolls. His data-mining approach--revealing technical details, contracting procedures, lawsuits, charges and countercharges, local accounts of travel, and services along the road--provides a wealth of information for scholars to more critically consider the cultural and historical context of the Road's construction and use. While most of America's First Interstate covers the early days during the era of stagecoach and wagon traffic, the story continues to the decline of the road as railroads became prominent, its rebirth as US Route 40 during the automobile age, and its status in the present day.
Author: John A. Jakle
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2008-01-01
Total Pages: 291
ISBN-13: 0820330280
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMotoring unmasks the forces that shape the American driving experience--commercial, aesthetic, cultural, mechanical--as it takes a timely look back at our historically unconditional love of motor travel. Focusing on recreational travel between 1900 and 1960, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle cover dozens of topics related to drivers, cars, and highways and explain how they all converge to uphold that illusory notion of release and rejuvenation we call the "open road." Jakle and Sculle have collaborated on five previous books on the history, culture, and landscape of the American road. Here, with an emphasis on the driver's perspective, they discuss garages and gas stations, roadside tourist attractions, freeways and toll roads, truck stops, bus travel, the rise of the convenience store, and much more. All the while, the authors make us think about aspects of driving that are often taken for granted: how, for instance, the many lodging and food options along our highways reinforce the connection between driving and "freedom" and how, by enabling greater speeds, highway engineers helped to stoke motorists' "blessed fantasy of flight." Although driving originally celebrated freedom and touted a common experience, it has increasingly become a highly regulated, isolated activity. The motive behind America's first embrace of the automobile--individual prerogative--still substantially obscures this reality. "Americans did not have the automobile imposed on them," say the authors. Jakle and Sculle ask why some of the early prophetic warnings about our car culture went unheeded and why the arguments of its promoters resonated so persuasively. Today, the automobile is implicated in any number of environmental, even social, problems. As the wisdom of our dependence on automobile travel has come into serious question, reassessment of how we first became that way is more important than ever.
Author: Thomas L. Karnes
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2009-09-22
Total Pages: 223
ISBN-13: 9780786442829
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom animal paths to superhighways, transportation has been the backbone of American expansion and growth. This examination of the interstate highway system in the United States, and the forces that shaped it, includes the introduction of the automobile, the Good Roads Movement, and the Lincoln Highway Association. The book offers an analysis of state and federal road funding, modern road-building options, and the successes and failures of the current highway system. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Author: Earl Swift
Publisher: HMH
Published: 2011-06-09
Total Pages: 401
ISBN-13: 054754913X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDiscover the twists and turns of one of America’s great infrastructure projects with this “engrossing history of the creation of the U.S. interstate system” (Los Angeles Times). It’s become a part of the landscape that we take for granted, the site of rumbling eighteen-wheelers and roadside rest stops, a familiar route for commuters and vacationing families. But during the twentieth century, the interstate highway system dramatically changed the face of our nation. These interconnected roads—over 47,000 miles of them—are man-made wonders, economic pipelines, agents of sprawl, uniquely American symbols of escape and freedom, and an unrivaled public works accomplishment. Though officially named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, this network of roadways has origins that reach all the way back to the World War I era, and The Big Roads—“the first thorough history of the expressway system” (The Washington Post)—tells the full story of how they came to be. From the speed demon who inspired a primitive web of dirt auto trails to the largely forgotten technocrats who planned the system years before Ike reached the White House to the city dwellers who resisted the concrete juggernaut when it bore down on their neighborhoods, this book reveals both the massive scale of this government engineering project, and the individual lives that have been transformed by it. A fast-paced history filled with fascinating detours, “the book is a road geek’s treasure—and everyone who travels the highways ought to know these stories” (Kirkus Reviews).
