For higher or for worse, Texas highways have tales to inform

I know a book is special when I think about it years after reading it for the first time. “Miles and Miles of Texas: 100 Years of the Texas Highway Department” by Carol Dawson and Roger Allen Polson is one such book. I read it for the first time a few years ago and even recommended it on the air back then, but only for a short time. In the ten seconds that I had to spend that day, I couldn’t do him justice. So now let me give it the time it deserves.

Part of the reason I especially like the book is because my father drove me and my brothers all over Texas as kids bragging about our great road system. This book represents my father and honestly shows how early political corruption in Texas (can you say Ferguson?) Charged.

This book is about how the Texas highway system was built, the story of how the state, as the authors say, “got the farmer out of the mud.” Farm-to-market and ranch-to-market streets – FM and RM – were developed in Texas. The sowing of wildflowers along the highways began long before Lady Bird Johnson took up and developed the promotion of the practice as her special project. That story is here.

Miles and Miles of Texas suggests that “throughout recorded history, streets have provided opportunities for criminals.” Bonnie and Clyde used the good roads for quick escapes. Serial killers chased the interstates. Smugglers of all kinds took advantage of the anonymity of the overcrowded, fast-flowing motorway traffic.

Roads don’t always mean universal progress. Roads connect, but they also divide and bypass. They unite some and isolate others. Eminent Domain is often called for for the public good, but generally the poor pay the highest price for the “public good”.

What I love most about the book is that it is full of wonderful anecdotes that are sometimes shocking, sometimes inspiring, and sometimes just plain hilarious. I found it particularly amusing how inmates who worked on road construction during World War II got tired of driving by with their children only to stare at them in their prison strips. The inmates selected the scariest look among them and chained him to a tree with a twelve-meter chain. Then when cars passed, he would run after them until the chain was stretched, and then he would end up tensing like a zombie. The car would spit away while the children stared out the rear window in horror. I can imagine these petrified children keeping their parents up late into the night. Perhaps there is a poetic justice in that.

Another notable aspect of the book is the photographs. They were selected in close collaboration with the Texas Highway Department, which has phenomenal archives. The book includes dozens of these rare photographs of Texas roads and bridges at all stages of construction. The photographs were often taken by engineers and others uniquely involved in road construction, so you will feel privileged to see perspectives that few have seen. This is a book that really animates history because of the unique relationships between the photos and those who took them. An impressive, extensive research went into the compilation of this book.

I enjoy it as extraordinary reading, from start to finish and as an illustrated book to read in peace.

Compared to other federal states, we have some impressive achievements in our road system. We pioneered FM roads, as previously mentioned, landscaping the highways for beauty and safety, inventing the turn in Texas (where you don’t have to walk through the lights to reverse direction on a freeway), and really extraordinary, even beautiful roadside rest stops.

Miles and Miles of Texas is a fun collection from Texana. Well worth a look.