Tom Kacich: 100 years ago, county voters paved the way

Feb. 27—One hundred years ago, the county board of supervisors wanted to build a network of hard (non-dirt) roads in Champaign County, and it seems it wasn't beyond some political trickery to get it done.

Displeased with the slow pace of road construction by the state of Illinois, county officials undertook their own program with the understanding that they'd be reimbursed for 50 percent of their expenses by the state.

The county scheduled a $2.5 million bond issue referendum (about $44.5 million in today's dollars) not in May or June or July, when the weather would be more favorable for the largely rural electorate to get to the polls, but for Feb. 27, when the unpaved roads would be at their absolute worst, thus highlighting the need for modern, concrete pavements.

That time of the year also would be difficult for the most remote farmers — who would pay the bulk of the cost for the roads via higher property taxes — to get to the polls. There were just 58 polling places in the entire county, and they'd be open only between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Even the weather aided those promoting the construction program. On the day before the vote, Champaign-Urbana got another 0.15 inches of rain on top of the already-soggy soil.

It's hard to imagine how difficult it was to travel on the primitive roads of Champaign County in 1923. There was only one long section of pavement outside of Champaign-Urbana then — the two-lane road called SBI 10 that connected Danville and the twin cities and continued on to Monticello, Bement and Decatur.

But there had been enormous growth in the number of registered cars on the state's roads: from 503,800 in 1920 to 847,000 in 1923, according to the Illinois Secretary of State's Office. And many of those automobile owners longed to travel the open roads.

Doing so, particularly in the winter months, was virtually out of the question. County board member C.B. Burkhardt of Homer told his colleagues in the winter of 1923 that he attempted to drive his car to Urbana and got about a mile and a half outside of town before having to turn back because of the mud.

"As it is now, during three months of the year, it is impossible for the farmer to get his grain to the elevator," wrote News-Gazette Publisher D.W. Stevick, a gung-ho proponent of the bond issue. "When the mud roads do permit him to do so, then the railroad is unable to furnish him box cars, owing to the heavy demand for them."

For years, the Chicago Tribune observed, farmers had opposed hard roads based on the belief — correctly, it turned out, for a time — that they'd be the ones paying for them. (Illinois didn't adopt a motor fuel tax to pay for road construction until 1927).

"It became so unpleasant for the advocates of hard roads even to hold public meetings for discussion that the program was dropped as politically disastrous," the Tribune said.

Champaign County's road-building bonds would be backed with property-tax payments, mostly from farmers. Stevick said the typical farmer who owned 100 acres would pay only about $18 a year more (about $320 in today's dollars) because of the road program. He didn't mention the comparative pittance that city residents would pay.

The Urbana Courier determined that because of difficult road conditions, it would be mostly Champaign-Urbana residents voting on the tax increase on Feb. 27.

"Still, a farmer may, under present circumstances, be able to walk to the polls if they are not too far, or ride horseback if he hasn't forgotten the art, and still owns a horse," the Urbana newspaper said. "The others and their good wives are just out of luck unless the election board agrees to take their votes by phone, on the grounds that the roads are so bad no one can get to the polls."

The News-Gazette and Stevick were among the biggest advocates of the program that promised to build 173 miles of roads that would touch every small town in the county and additionally make it easier for the residents of those hamlets to spend their money in Champaign-Urbana with The News-Gazette's advertisers. Stevick even attended meetings of the county board to promote the idea, and wrote many pro-construction editorials before the vote.

The student-run Daily Illini also boosted the bond issue, tying it to the nearly completed Memorial Stadium.

"With the development of the extensive highway program comes the new stadium which must be filled," said Charles Stahl, head of the bond issue publicity committee, "and a good system of roads leading to the sports center will materially increase the crowds which may be drawn from the surrounding counties as well as the university and other schools."

The Courier was more circumspect, noting that taxpayers were close to being tapped out but that building hard roads was more cost-efficient than spending money every year to repair the mostly dirt, or mud, roads that crossed the county.

"There is only one way to do a thing, and that is to do it right," the Courier editorialized. "There is only one way to fix roads so they will be passable in all kinds of weather and conditions, and that is to put down a surface that will stand up under every emergency and that does not disintegrate either at the first visitation of bad weather, or after long continued periods of bad weather."

When the votes were counted, the bond issue passed in Champaign, 2,104 to 761; in Urbana, 845 to 429; and in the rural precincts, 2,851 to 1,881. It lost in one Urbana precinct and in 14 rural ones.

The county's voters won praise from the Tribune for their "progressiveness in relation to hard roads" and a backhanded compliment from the Commercial News in Danville, where a similar road-building bond issue had been passed in 1914.

"Hard roads are one of the high lights of Illinois' progress in the last quarter of a century," the Commercial News wrote. "Who will deny that Vermilion County is justified in being proud of the fact that it was nearly 10 years in advance of its sister counties? Hard roads are a live issue in Illinois today, but in Vermilion County, they are an old story."

By September, road-building was underway in Champaign County, on some of the sections at the rate of 700 feet a day. It was an odd configuration, however. Although the right of way was 30 feet wide, the pavement had a width of only 9 feet, enough for just one lane of traffic. The thought was that 173 miles of one-lane road was better than 85 miles of two-lane pavement, for both motorists and county board members.

But by 1927, the year the road building was projected to be completed, the county had run out of money with only 125 miles of hard roads built. Higher-than-expected construction costs were blamed.

Frank Sheets, the state superintendent of highways, pledged to Champaign County officials in 1923 that the roads, if properly designed and built and not loaded beyond the weight standards of the time, might last 50 to 100 years.

None of that original pavement is visible today, said Champaign County Engineer Jeff Blue, who heads the county highway department. But it is in use as a base.

"There is a lot of 9-foot concrete pavement buried under layers and layers of asphalt that have been laid over the concrete for many years, but there is not any exposed 9-foot pavement on the county system anymore," Blue said. "It still carries the weight of the traffic that is riding on the overlaying asphalt."