Miles of VDOT-maintained highway, 1918-2005.
- Source: VDOT Mileage Tables.
1932, when the mileage suddenly spikes, was when the state took over authority for road maintenance from localities. Up until that period, automobile transportation was an adventure, at best.
The state is littered with highways named “Plank Road,” or variants thereof. That’s because a common method of dealing with muddy roads (which rendered them impassable for much of the year) was to lay down planks of wood, boardwalk style. Localities simply didn’t have the resources to provide anything better. Buying asphalt and cement on a statewide scale has a way of bringing down the price.
There are also plenty of bridges named “Free Bridge.” That was in contrast with the old, privatized approach, when each bridge was a business unto itself. Bridges are both expensive and tend to wash out when built in a less-than-ideal fashion, so they were built by corporations to last a decade or so, which would recoup their investment by charging a toll. Inevitably the bridge would collapse and, until somebody else got together the money to build a new bridge and start charging, people would have to head miles up or down stream to find another place to cross. Only government can afford an investment of this scale, since tolls simply don’t generate enough income to make it worth the while for a business. So when government finally got in the business of building bridges, shortly after the state highway commission was put together in 1918, many of these formerly-expensive spans were replaced by “free bridges,” some of which still stand today.
Much of this was the work of Sen. Harry Byrd, the young president of the Shenandoah Valley Turnpike Company who, having seen that private roads weren’t working out, got the state into the transportation business shortly after his election to the Virginia Senate in 1915. Come 1932, by then having served a term of governor, Byrd brought about the passage of the Byrd Road Act, which made the 36,000 miles of county roads the state’s responsibility. Urbanized areas of the state were entirely opposed to this proposal, believing that they knew their transportation needs better than the state; rural areas thought it was a fine idea. Rural interests won out, of course, and our roads have been a state interest ever since.
For more about the history of Virginia roads, see VDOT’s timeline. For more about Sen. Harry Byrd, see the U.S. DOT’s biographical article.
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