Edwin Warley James
When Edwin Warley James left the Corps of Engineers’ New London (Conn.) District Office in 1910 to work for the Office of Public Roads, the fledgling automobile and roadbuilding industry gained a hard working, brilliant engineer and an author and future diplomat.
James, who was to become the “Father of the Inter-American Highway,” was born October 17, 1877, in Ossining, N.Y. After he graduated from Phillip’s Exeter Academy in 1897, he continued his studies at Harvard University, where he was a 1901 cum laude graduate.
He went to work in a publishing office, but his interest in engineering led him to spend his evenings studying drafting and steel detailing at the Boston Evening Institute. This schooling only increased his desire for greater engineering knowledge, and in 1905 he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he completed the final 2 years of engineering study. In March of that year he married Ethel Townsend.
After he graduated from MIT, James received an appointment with the Corps of Engineers and 6 months later was on his way to the Philippine Islands as a district engineer. After 2 years of supervising public works projects in the Provinces of Bulacan and Nueva Ecija, he returned to New London.
It was here that he worked on design and surveys for the intracoastal canal. James was now in his early thirties and had a solid background of engineering experience.
When in May 1910 Public Roads needed two experienced engineers, James applied for one of the positions and was accepted.
He immediately dug into the problems of road construction, and it wasn’t long after passage of the Post Road Act of 1912 that Director Page selected and assigned responsibility for administration of the program to James.
Under this Act, experimental roads were built in a number of States with the cooperation of counties and other legislative districts. From this experience, James became fully aware of the many problems encountered with Federal assistance at the operational level.
As a result, he realized that programs funded through the Federal Government could best be administered through State organizations. At every opportunity, he supported this view and when the 1916 Federal Aid Road Act was passed, enough legislators had been convinced to establish a Federal-State relationship—a relationship which has been fundamental in the development of highway systems throughout the United States—to make it part of the law.
After passage of the 1916 Act, James was placed in charge of project implementation. Faced with project submissions and no uniform procedures or criteria, he soon established standards for plan sheets and other information necessary for project review and approval.
It wasn’t long before Federal legislation called for selection of a primary highway system, and criteria were required to assure the best route selections to meet the purposes of the law. Once again he accepted the challenge and when Thomas H. MacDonald became the Director in May 1919, he asked James to select a small committee and assist him with the project. Using Post Office maps and Census Bureau information, James and his assistants established a formula that assured them that the routes selected would serve to a maximum extent the greatest needs of the country at the time. This method withstood many controversies and inquiries that flooded the desk of the administrator.
It was quite natural now that the question of route markings and designation would be required for interstate travel. Once again James was called upon to provide a solution. Taking advantage of his experience and the personal relationships developed over the years, he, along with others from the Bureau, was able to get the cooperation from
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