By March 1953 when the Chief retired, millions of miles of hard-surfaced, efficient, connected roads were built, and the building of the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways was about to begin. But the real importance of his work, as one of his close friends and associates, Pyke Johnson, former President of the Automotive Safety Foundation, expressed in 1957, was that it allowed “. . . the vast transportation revolution” to take “place in the lives of all of us. . . . It is enough to note, perhaps, that as of today all but 22 million of our people live in urban or metropolitan areas. Isolation no longer is an important factor in our lives.”
In the 34 years that the Chief served, a list of his career milestones reads like the history of the movement for better roads in this country and around the world. A list of only a very few of these would include:
- Sponsored the organization of the Highway and Highway Transport Education Committee (later to become a part of the Highway Research Board), 1920.
- Led in defeating the “Townsend Plan” which called for a very limited system of national highways to be built and maintained by the Federal Government and instead argued for the continuation of the Federal-aid plan but restricted to a larger Federal-aid highway system to be selected by the States, themselves. This became the Federal Highway Act of 1921.
- Chairman, Joint Board of Interstate Highways, 1924.
- Sponsored the organization of the Pan American Highway Congress, 1924.
- Sponsored first President’s Highway Safety Conference, 1945.
- Sponsored creation of the official U.S. Interregional Highway Commission, 1946.
- Served as a member of the Official Commission on the Alaska Highway. Later, he was charged with the responsibility of building this road.
- Throughout his term of office, he served as a member of the Executive Committee, American Association of State Highway Officials and took an active part in all of its deliberations on the part of the Federal Government.
For his work, he received most of the honors that can be bestowed by individuals, associations, and organizations interested in highway work within the United States. He was awarded an honorary degree in engineering from Iowa State College in 1929, and received the Marston Medal for Achievement in Engineering in 1939. He received the Medal of Merit for outstanding service during World War II. He received the George Bartlett Award in 1931, was designated an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers in the late 1940’s, and received the Award of Merit of the Highway Research Board in 1950. These are but a few of the honors conferred upon the Chief in his own country. In the international field, his advice was sought, and given, all over the world. He was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, the honor of Knight of the First Class, Order of St. Olav, given by the King of Norway, as well as numerous other important recognitions by foreign governments. All of these and the many more awards he received attest to his excellent work and the respect held for him by those interested in the betterment of the highways.
The Chief’s 49 years of active service in the betterment of our highways, first for Iowa and then for the Nation, were motivated by a belief in the importance of sound transportation and the role of highways in the overall picture. Herbert S. Fairbank, a close friend and a great name in the roads effort in his own right, discussed MacDonald’s views of transportation
as something much more than the ‘service’ it is generally held to he, more even than the essential link between supply and demand, or production and consumption, and actually as, in itself, one of the most potent of the creative forces that have shaped and will continue to shape this and all other countries in almost every aspect—in their economy, of course, but also in the spread and concentrations of their population and industry, the location, size, form and character of their cities, and the degree of development of their every natural resource.
