Report of State Highway Engineer. 49 



It is no longer so much a question of the advantages of good 

 roads as it is how to obtain, the means with which to build them 

 and how best to expend these means. Thought and action are 

 turning to special district organization, followed by a tax per acre 

 or a bond issue to pay the cost of construction and to township 

 and county bonds. One hundred and forty of these special dis- 

 tricts are now in operation in the State with several more likely 

 to be formed in the near future. 



The era of voting road bonds, and therefore I believe the era 

 of real road making in Missouri, has begun within the past two 

 years, almost within the past year. Boone county issued a few 

 thousand dollars of rock road bonds in 1850 and Franklin in 1870. 

 Forty years later, in 1910, a special district in Greene county is- 

 sued $6,000. Beginning, then,, with the agitation in 1911, and in- 

 cluding the Greene county district issue, bonds have been voted 

 to build roads in 11 eight-mile special districts, 10 benefit assess- 

 ment districts and 4 townships, making 25 separate localities, in 

 the total amoun.t of $1,053,000. This department rendered some 

 aid in every one of these localities, and in about three-fourths of 

 them made preliminary estimates of cost and held road meetings. 



The agitation, talk and road tours are having the desired 

 effect to arouse enthusiasm and create definite action for improve- 

 ment. The in,terest aroused by the tours, inspections and location 

 of the cross-state highway over the Old Trails road has started 

 travel across the central part of Missouri which hitherto went 

 around the State and would continue to pass around if something 

 or somebody did not invite the travelers across. It has aroused 

 the good roads spirit throughout the entire counties through which 

 the road is projected and has started action, for general road im- 

 provement in a manner that is entirely satisfactory. The work, 

 agitation and selection of the Old Trails road for the cross-state 

 highway of Missouri by Board of Agriculture and its officers did 

 not stop on the border of Missouri, but has expanded into a trans- 

 cor^tinental Old Trails road from Washington to San Francisco, 

 and with a Missourian, Judge Lowe of Kansas City, the first and 

 present president of the national association. From a poor road 

 across Missouri eighteen months ago, without a single efficient 

 local road organization, to a fairly good summer road now, upon 

 which not less than $100,000 has been expended, $350,000 in road 

 bonds voted and with special and efficient local organizations along 

 almost its entire length, is the general record along this route. 



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