January 2003
People
A Community (and its Quarry) Reborn
Mind Over Management: Making Resolutions a Reality
Aggregate association efforts have contributed to U.S. economic growth, military strength, and quality of life.
By Bob Drake
Stone for road construction is transferred from railcars to horse-drawn wagons in the early 1900s. Source: A Pictorial History of the Sand and Gravel Industry. Used with permission from NSSGA.
In the same year Henry Ford founded his motor company, the Wright brothers became airborne over a North Carolina beach, and some hardy souls made the first transcontinental automobile trip from San Francisco to New York in 52 days, a group of quarry owners gathered in Chicago to form what is considered to be the country’s first national association of aggregate producers. Little information is available about the National Quarry Owners Association’s activities — if any — following that initial meeting in May 1903. Whether the same group of industry leaders later formed the National Crushed Stone Association also is not clear.
Nevertheless, 1903 is an appropriate milestone in the aggregate industry’s organization and transformation into an important contributor to the nation’s growth and quality of life. Efforts of national associations representing the aggregates industry, in conjunction with road-building and highway-user associations, have left a 100-year legacy of highways that contribute significantly to the country’s economic and military strength.
A call for better roads
The early 1900s began with a significant transition from man and horse power to machine power. This transition changed not only how aggregates were mined, processed, and transported, but more importantly, the nationwide demand for construction materials for road construction.
Ironically — from today’s environmentalist perspective — bicyclists were the first to call for construction of better roads, according to a highway history compiled by Richard Weingroff, information liaison specialist with the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Office of Infrastructure. Weingroff says the following three factors influenced road construction in the early 20th century:
- Popularity of the bicycle.
- Rural free delivery of mail, which required passable roads and gained farmers’ support for good roads.
- Rise of the automobile, particularly the low-priced Model T.
With development of the internal combustion engine and introduction of Ford’s affordable Model T in 1908, automobile ownership in the United States soared, reaching into the millions by the mid-1920s.
The first two decades of the 20th century also were significant for the formation of industry associations advocating, among other issues, road construction: the National Quarry Owners Association in 1903; the National Sand and Gravel Producers Association in 1911 — changed to the National Sand and Gravel Association (NSGA) in 1916; the National Highway Association in 1912; the American Association of State Highway Officials in 1914; and the National Crushed Stone Association in 1918.
In these early years of road construction, the NSGA promoted use of aggregate obtained from established producers. “The Association has started a campaign which shows the folly of using wayside pit material,” announced the National Sand and Gravel Bulletin. “Incidentally, the sheer ignorance of some architects, engineers and builders as to the imperative requirement of using clean sand and gravel is absolutely astounding.”
A steam shovel and crew at work in a sand and gravel pit in Ohio in 1910. Source: A Pictorial History of the Sand and Gravel Industry. Used with permission from NSSGA.
The unending fight for funds
In his 1997 paper, “History of Aggregate Development and Geology: The Past is the Key to the Future,” William Langer, a geologist with the Mineral Resources Team of the U.S. Geological Survey and author of Aggregates Manager’s “Carved in Stone” column wrote, “Almost every issue that the aggregate industry experiences today has been recognized for at least a decade; many of those issues have been recognized for a half a century; and a few of them have been recognized for nearly a century.”
Certainly, the need for adequate federal funding for construction and maintenance of good roads is one of those century-old issues. Efforts to procure funding began in the early 1900s and continues unabated with this year’s campaign for reauthorization of TEA-21.
As early as 1912, Charles Davis of the National Highways Association called for and mapped out a 50,000-mile national highways network. “When established, these national highways will increase the wealth, the power, and the importance of this country as nothing else can do besides that which has brought civilization to the savage, wealth to the poor, and happiness to all — good roads,” wrote Davis.
He advocated highways connecting population centers for industrial and military use, not necessarily rural roads “to get the farmer out of the mud.”
As an initial effort, the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 provided $75 million over five years, but primarily for rural post roads. However, its effect on road construction and the aggregates industry was diminished by World War I, during which transportation of construction materials was curtailed by military use of the railroads, according to Weingroff.
In 1903, crushed stone production in the United States was about 48.6 million tons, according to the USGS (early production totals for construction sand and gravel are not available). By 1913, crushed stone production had more than doubled to 103.9 million tons. But during and following World War I, production declined to a low in 1921 of 61.1 million tons, the USGS reports.
The Federal Highway Act of 1921 helped end the stagnation in road construction and aggregate use. In 1922, Weingroff says that 10,250 miles of federal-aid road projects were completed at a cost of $189 million. These projects encompassed three times as much roadway as had been improved since the start of federal-aid programs in 1916.
Road improvements, however, usually involved just providing “graded earth, sand-clay, or gravel surfaces,” according to Weingroff. But, by 1926 there were approximately 3 million miles of roads in the United States, about 500,000 miles of which were paved, according to Langer. About $1 billion was being spent annually for road construction, he says.
Onset of the Depression in the 1930s diverted federal funds from transportation projects to projects that provided more work for the unemployed, according to Weingroff. By the late 1930s, however, support increased for construction of a network of “superhighways.” The Federal Highway Act of 1938 directed the chief of the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) to study the feasibility of a six-route tollroad network. The BPR’s final report included a “Master Plan for Free Highway Development” that recommended a 27,000-mile inter-regional freeway network, including bypass roads around large cities connecting with radial highways into the city centers.
By this time, crushed stone production in the United States had rebounded to more than 120 million tons per year, according to USGS statistics. Construction sand and gravel production was about 200 million tons annually. Both were steadily increasing.
The Federal Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a 40,000-mile national system of Interstate highways, but did not provide any funds to build the system. By 1947, the Public Roads Administration, successor to the BPR, had designated the first 37,682 miles.
Initial federal funding of $25 million for Interstate construction on a 50-50 matching basis was authorized by the Highway Act of 1952. The amount was increased two years later to $175 million on a 60-40 matching basis. During this five-year period, 1952 through 1956, aggregate production (crushed stone plus sand and gravel) increased more than 50 percent, from about 740 million tons to more than 1.1 billion tons per year.
Over the next 10 years — 1957 through 1966 — aggregate production grew another 50 percent to more than 1.7 billion tons per year as the federal government committed significant money to Interstate construction. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorized $25 billion for fiscal years 1957-1969 and increased the federal share to 90 percent. The act also increased the federal gas tax and established the Highway Trust Fund. This “launched an unprecedented demand for aggregate,” according to Langer.
Aggregate associations have worked over the years to ensure strong federal support for road construction. And the benefit has extended far beyond the industry. In a 1963 memoir, President Eisenhower wrote, “More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one (construction of the Interstate highway system) would change the face of America . . . Its impact on the American economy — the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up — was beyond calculation.”
References
fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/history.htm
Bob Drake is editor for Aggregates Manager.