A most interesting persuasive map published in 1915 by the National Highways Association, advocating the construction of a mammoth national road network as essential “for war, for defense, or for peace.”

According to the American Geographical Society,

“The National Highways Association (NHA) was established in 1911 to promote the development of an improved national road network in the United States. Under the slogan “Good roads for everyone!” the NHA proposed a 150,000-mile (241,402-kilometer) network of roads, based on a four-fold system of national, state, county, and town or township highways and roads. This map, issued by the NHA in 1915, shows the tentative routes of the most important highways in this network [i.e., the “national” roads], totaling 100,000 miles (160,934 kilometers) in length. The table at the top provides estimates of the numbers and percentages of people living in counties traversed by the proposed national highways or counties adjoining them. The map associates the cause of good roads with the “preparedness” debate underway at that time concerning possible intervention by the United States in World War I as an ally of Britain and France. “Besides issuing brochures and circulars aimed at convincing citizens of the need for a national road system, the NHA was a prolific producer of maps. Cartographic work was done at an office in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts, where approximately 40 people were employed on the property of Charles Henry Davis (1865–1951), president and cofounder of the NHA. Davis believed that these maps would be helpful to a national highways commission that he hoped would be established and that they would assist the states in integrating their roads into a national system. Congress never embraced the plan put forward by the NHA, but the organization and its maps helped to promote the cause of a national road network.”

As heir to the American Road Machine Company, a manufacturer of road construction equipment, NHA President and co-founder Charles Henry Davis (1865-1951) was hardly a disinterested party. Whatever his motives, his vision was eventually realized, albeit heavily modified and after much delay, with the passage in 1956 of the Federal Aid Highway Act. Today the Interstate Highway System extends nearly 50,000 miles and accommodates some 25% of the nation’s road traffic.

References

As of September 2017 OCLC lists 21 institutional holdings under four different accession numbers. However, many of these appear to refer to an image of the map hosted on the web site of the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For further—albeit one-sided—background on the NHA, see “National Highways Association[:] Its Foundation, Growth and Objects,” The Automobile Journal for Jan. 25, 1917, pp. 24-26.