Margaret French Is My Hook

I got interested in pavement because St. Louis Community College asked me to lead a Route 66 bus tour.

Doing my Route 66 research, I got to drive on a 1926 brick pavement in the boonies in Illinois and on a 1926 dirt pavement in a small town in central Missouri.  Both pavements are still in use.

But my special find – my secret find – is a stretch of Route 66 macadam pavement abandoned in a forest in Valley Park, Missouri, the town where we live.

I became intrigued by pavement, and the history of paving in America.

I am so intrigued that I have volunteered to give a talk about the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and its effect on paved roads.

In 1904, Americans knew that they had the worst roads in the civilized world.  Americans realized that their roads needed to be paved, but, in 1904, the Americans mindset said that government should not pay for paving public roads; the American mindset said that property owners should pay for paving the public road in front of their property.

The World’s Fair played a small part in changing our mindset about paving. 

I needed a way to make my talk about pavement interesting for my audience.  I needed a hook.  The Internet gave me my hook: Margaret French. 

She lived at 747 Forest Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri.  In the year 1900, the Barber Asphalt Company paved Forest Avenue, and Margaret was asked to pay her share of the paving costs.

Margaret refused to pay --- possibly because she was not an American.  She was Scottish, and back in Scotland, the government paid for paving public roads.  Margaret may have asked herself: why should I, as an individual, pay for something that benefits the whole community?

But Margaret was not living in Scotland, she was living in America.  Therefore, she got sued.  The case went to the United States Supreme Court.  Margaret French vs. the Barber Asphalt Company.  Margaret lost in 1901 when the Supreme Court said she had to pay.

My hook: my talk on paving would be based on conjecture:  what if Margaret French went to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.  There were nearly 1,500 buildings on the Fairgrounds.  What would have caught her eye? 

Margaret might have visited the Belgian Pavilion, where she could see a big map of the roads in Belgium that were paved by the national government.  She might have gone to the Portland Cement building, where exhibits extolled the virtues of cement pavement.  

Definitely, she would have enjoyed the New Jersey Road Exhibit.  New Jersey was ahead of the rest of the country: it was the first state where the state government started paying for paving roads.  Margaret would have found that encouraging.

But there was one of 1,500 buildings that I am sure Margaret avoided: the Barber Asphalt Company’s exhibit.

However, my talk will find that the World’s Fair did not have an immediate effect on the American mindset.  Missouri didn’t create a highway department until 9 years after the Fair.  The Federal Government didn’t create a federal highway system until 1926, 22 years after the Fair.

Margaret French would have been 76 years old in 1926.  I wonder if she felt she had a hand in changing how Americans viewed pavement.

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Mary Chapin Carpenter has her "foot on the pedal and her heart on the brake" - a 3-minute song called A Road Is Just A Road: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeRU10GRvA0

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.