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On October 3, 1893, Secretary of Agriculture J. Sterling Morton instituted the Office of Road Inquiry and appointed General Roy Stone, formerly secretary for the National League of Good Roads, as Special Agent and Engineer for Road Inquiry.

Earlier in 1893, the Office had been authorized by a statute enacted by the 52d Congress and approved March 3, 1893, by President Benjamin Harrison.

The statute read in part:

"To enable the Secretary of Agriculture to make inquiries in regard to the systems of road management throughout the United States, to make investigations in regard to the best methods of road-making, and to enable him to assist the agricultural college and experiment stations in disseminating information on this subject."

General Stone was a professional civil and mechanical engineer; a military hero who distinguished himself in the Civil War and again in the Spanish-American War; an astute organizer; and the architect of many State-aid laws for U.S. roads.

He proposed the first parcel post, the first rural free delivery service and postal savings banks.



Martin Dodge was appointed Interim Director of the Office of Road Inquiry in August 1898 when his predecessor, General Roy Stone, vacated the office to serve in the Spanish-American War. General Stone resumed his duties as Director on January 31, 1899. He resigned on October 23, 1899, and Martin Dodge was reappointed and served until 1905.

Mr. Dodge was a zealous roadbuilder and an advocate of free roads in the United States. As a member of the Ohio State Roads Commission, he was the leading exponent of the first brick surfaced rural road in this country.

The road was laid on the Wooster Pike near Cleveland. Four miles of brick pavement were built in the fall of 1893 at a cost of $16,000 per mile.

During Mr. Dodge’s tenure, he established an information office to furnish advice about roadbuilding techniques to State and local officials and recommended a postgraduate school for civil engineer graduates to receive advance roadbuilding training, which became a reality in 1905.



Logan Waller Page in 1905 became the first Director of the newly created Office of Public Roads. The Congress had passed an act that consolidated the Office of Public Road Inquiries and the Division of Tests of the Bureau of Chemistry.

Five years earlier, Mr. Page, a renowned geologist with the Massachusetts State Highway Commission, accepted the position of Chief of the Division of Tests in Washington.

As Laboratory Chief, his responsibilities included a study of road-building on a national scale. As a geologist in Massachusetts he had conducted the first extensive investigation of roadbuilding materials in America.

Then as the Director of the Office of Public Roads, he began a series of investigations which won international acclaim for the laboratories he directed. 191