Miles and Miles of Texas : 100 Years of the Texas Highway Department / Carol Dawson and Roger Polson ; Geoff Appold, photo editor ; foreword by Willie Nelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dawson, Carol, 1951- author.

Polson, Roger Allen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ferguson, James Edward, 1871-1944.

Ferguson, James Edward.

Texas. State Department of Highways and Public Transportation--History.

Texas.

Texas. Highway Department--History.

Texas. Department of Transportation--History.

Highway engineering--Political aspects--Texas--History.

Highway engineering.

Highway departments--Texas--History.

Highway departments.

Texas--Politics and government--20th century.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

College Station : Texas A&M University Press, [2016]

Summary:

On the eve of its centennial, Carol Dawson and Roger Allen Polson present almost 100 years of history and never-before-seen photographs that track the development of the Texas Highway Department. An agency originally created "to get the farmer out of the mud," it has gone on to build the vast network of roads that now connects every corner of the state. When the Texas Highway Department (now called the Texas Department of Transportation or TxDOT) was created in 1917, there were only about 200,000 cars in Texas traveling on fewer than a thousand miles of paved roads. Today, after 100 years of the Texas Highway Department, the state boasts over 80,000 miles of paved, state-maintained roads that accommodate more than 25 million vehicles. Sure to interest history enthusiasts and casual readers alike, decades of progress and turmoil, development and disaster, and politics and corruption come together once more in these pages, which tell the remarkable story of an infrastructure 100 years in the making.

Contents:

Tracks, trails, mud, and money

Out of the mud and into the mire : the Ferguson years

"Fergusonism"

The "Rock core of integrity"

The wolves return

War and peace

The midcentury : Eisenhower's dream

The 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s

The quiet giant : the 1990s

From 2001 to the centennial.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-62349-457-5

OCLC:

958095003