Named and Numbered Roads.
—For a number of years road enthusiasts, automobile clubs, and chambers of commerce have been selecting and marking main lines of road across the country or through their particular cities. Some of these roads such as the Lincoln Highway, the Santa Fé and the Yellowstone Trails extend across the continent from coast to coast; or north to south as the Dixie, the Jefferson, and the Jackson Highway. There are very many of these volunteer organizations; they attempt to secure the improvement of highways, ranging in length from transcontinental routes to short county lines, by bringing influence to bear on road officials and creating in the minds of the public generally an interest for better roads. Some states like Iowa and Nebraska passed laws enabling an association promoting any route to register it together with the marker that is to be used, providing penalties for injuring or defacing any sign board, and making it unlawful for others to use the name or marker design on any other road. It is said over a hundred routes were marked in Iowa, fifty in Illinois, and other states somewhat proportionately.
Opposition has been offered on the theory that it is the State’s business to mark and maintain signs along roads. It has been suggested that since the General Government has selected a system of national roads and since these must be by law continuous, that they be numbered continuously by the same number. For example the transcontinental road farthest north should be numbered 1, the next continental road, 3, the next, 5, and so on. That the roads running north and south beginning on the east be numbered with even numbers. Several of the New England states have already agreed to a common number or name for roads running through them. The point is that when a road has been marked a tourist may travel clear across the continent on the same number and would not have to look up a new number or name when he crossed a state line. Also when once made public a map of the roads would be good next year or the year after, and the traveler need not fear its having been changed. It might be possible that places would be located by certain roads as they were once by rivers. In the practical work of drafting, numbers are more easily placed on the map than are names.
Fig. 2.—“Road Closed” Sign as Furnished by Department. The Engineer in Charge Inserts Routing of Detour and Mileage in the Space Under the Words “Follow Marked Detour.”
Fig. 1. Standard Warning Sign for Barricades.
Fig. 3.—Standard Detour Sign as Furnished by Department. The Engineer in Charge Prints on the Sign the Route Number, Name of Trail, its Emblem if the Road has a Name and Emblem, the Next Town and County Seat or Main City On the Road.
