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Meanwhile, James and the Committee of Five were considering a numbering plan. James wrote to the committee members on August 27 enclosing a small map of the United States on which he had shown, he believed, "the possibility of a systematic plan for numbering interstate routes." Many years later, he recalled how he approached the task:
For interstate motorists in the 1920s, the named trails were the way to navigate around the country. A 1923 road atlas included a one-page “Midget Map of the Transcontinental Trails of the United States.” It showed the line of the following named interstate trails:
In 1923, Indiana was working to complete its segment of the National Old Trails Road, classified as State Road 3. In July, Director John D. Williams of the Indiana State Highway Commission announced that the road was now open from Indianapolis west to Mt. Meridian. Good Roads reported:
Mr. Williams points out that since work started this year closing the last gaps in the road, traffic has detoured at a point about 4 miles west of Stilesville.
Concern about the condition of the western half of the National Old Trails Road prompted Judge Lowe to make a bold proposal. He recommended that the portion of the road from Trinidad, Colorado, to Los Angeles be reconstructed with Willite, which he called “THE GREATEST DISCOVERY IN THE HISTORY OF ROAD CONSTRUCTION.” That was the subtitle of the association’s bulletin of August 1922. The cover advised:
Read Openmindedly and Learn How the Best Road
Ever Devised Can Be Built for the Least Cost and Smallest Maintenance
On December 8, 1922, President Harding delivered his second annual message before a joint session of Congress. For the first time in history, the President’s address was broadcast by radio to “be heard by many thousands outside of the House chamber and hundreds of miles distant from Washington,” as The Washington Post told readers. “The broadcasting will be done from the naval air station at Annapolis.”
On April 8, 1919, backers of a national highway system met in Chicago to form the Federal Highway Council. The council’s goal was a national system of interstate highways and a Federal Highway Commission to build it. Participants elected S. M. Williams as chairman. The advisory committee for the council included representatives of many organizations:
Around this time, BPR Director Page was in Denver, Colorado, for several days before heading to Chicago for the AASHO/Highway Industries Association meeting.
On August 5-7, 1918, the Spanish Trail Highway Association held its annual convention in Durango, Colorado, with over 600 delegates in attendance. (The name referred to a trail pioneered by American and Mexican traders from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Los Angeles, via Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, not the 19th century trail known as the Old Spanish Trail or the rival trails in Kansas.) One of the important resolutions adopted was to change the name of the organization to the Spanish Trail-Mesa Verde Highway Associat
On January 21, 1918, 160 representatives of industry met in the Florentine Room of the Congress Hotel in Chicago for what promised “to be the greatest and most practical move for efficiently co-ordinating the highways of our country, developing the means for transportation and ultimately linking up our main lines of travel.” They formed the Highway Industries Association, to be headed by S. M. Williams, sales manager of the Garford Motor Truck Company.
In mid-1917, The Automobile Journal featured a travel issue containing descriptions of several named trails. First up was the National Old Trails. The article began:
National Old Trails
Under the Victory Arch to Everywhere