On This Day in Automotive History: June 25 |
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1917: Bureau of Public Roads and the Forest Service sign a cooperative agreement for construction of a road across Monarch Pass in Colorado (later part of U.S. 50). W. M. Jeffrey of the Bureau of Public Roads ran the location survey in 1917, but work was delayed by World War I (Jeffrey served in France, performing civil engineering and road building duties). Groundbreaking takes place on July 10, 1919, and the completed road is dedicated on September 19, 1921. Groundbreaking takes place on July 10, 1919, and the completed road is dedicated on September 19, 1921. An article in Colorado Highways comments that Jeffrey's feelings during the ceremony "must have been much the same as those of a proud parent who attends the graduation of a favorite child . . . . From the speakers' stand where he stood while he spoke, he could see some of the tools with which he and his men had been working just a few days before. Like old friends were these tools; they seemed to greet him from where they lay in the tall mountain grass, and there, too, was the highway. Just beyond a little copse of aspen it curved and wound its way through the timber and up over the pass." Assistant District Engineer A. E. Palen of Bureau of Public Roads commented that for scenery, the road "out switzes Switzerland."
1952: President Harry Truman signs the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which authorizes the first funding, $25 million, specifically for the Interstate System.
1980: The film Herbie Goes Bananas was released.
1990: Deputy Secretary Elaine Chao helps launch the Pathfinder IVHS pilot project in Los Angeles, a cooperative effort by FHWA, the California DOT, and General Motors.
2019: Kenneth E. Behring died.