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By Chad Thompson
FHWA has trained entry-level employees through a centrally administered, multi-year training program since what seems like the dawn of time (actually 1905). However, the modern engineer-training program began at the end of World War II in 1946. While we were all...
By
Logan L. Ratliff
In 1939 I reported to the Bridge Division of Region 15 as a bridge designer. Region 15 was then, as now, in charge of designing and constructing public domain roads on the eastern shore of the country.
By
Joseph A. Todd
By
E. J. Woodrow
Currently there is much hoop-de-doo about persons on the Hill payroll for work not performed 9 to 5. But how about a worker performing technical service on a continuing basis without payroll compensation?
It happened in Region 15. It was tolerated, even encouraged. Fortunately it was a pre-Jack Anderson irregularity; otherwise, black clouds might have hung over the scandal-free reputation of the Roanoke Division of the Bureau of Public Roads.
By
Roderick S. Banks
I do not know that I should be considered an old-timer as I joined the Bureau of Public Roads some 30 years after it's inception. However, when I reported as an Engineering Aide to F. L. Brownell in Jackson, Mississippi, in July 1937, the Natchez Trace Parkway was in its infancy. The first shovelful of dirt had not yet been moved.
By
E. J. Woodrow
In this Bicentennial and election year, much is being written of the American presidential campaigns. One of the best remembered in our history courses is the 1844 struggle between Henry Clay, the Whig, and James K. Polk, the Democrat. Polk was the victor in an election famous for his winning slogan "fifty-four forty or fight."
If those of us who grew up in Region 15 had adopted a slogan it might well have been Polk-like in characterizing our operations: "1440 and fight."
By
Henry Gorschboth
My career with the Federal Highway Administration, formerly the Bureau of Public Roads, covered the period from 1933 to 1973. I started as an instrument man in a survey party, and attained the title of Division Engineer before retirement. My work ranged from Bar Harbor, Maine to Chalmette, Louisiana, in many States on the east side of the Mississippi River, and in the States of Texas and Arkansas on the west.
By
Arthur E. Grissom
By
Arthur E. Grissom
As stated in the last part of my dissertation about the 1931 season and the Almanor Survey, the BPR ran out of money and I got laid off. We (the family that is) went back down to Whittier and stayed with my folks until work opened up again. When I learned why the office ran short of funds which caused a whole bunch of us to get five months "leave without pay," to say that I was displeased would be rank understatement - I was disgusted and angry.
By
Arthur E. Grissom
This project was a relocation of the road running north from Azusa up San Gabriel Canyon which was made necessary by a concrete dam down near Azusa and an earth fill dam a few miles north. Both dams were under construction at the same time we were contracting the new road up on the hillside above the level of the lakes behind the dams.