Michigan Registered Historical Site
A plaque honoring Earle's efforts is located in a government building complex in Lansing, Michigan, directly west from the Capitol along the "mall" that corresponds with Michigan Ave. The plaque is located northwest of the footbridge that crosses Walnut.
HORATIO EARLE -- In 1905, the year the State Highway Department was created, Michigan roads were quaqmires of sand, mud, and clay that trapped horse-drawn vehicles and early automobiles alike. Bicycle clubs, such as the Leagues of American Wheeelmen, led the effort to "reform" roads nationwide. In Michigan, the first state highway commissioner, Horatio "Good Roads" Earle (1855-1935), a bicyclist himself, vowed to conquer "the Mighty Monarch Mud." A former sate senator, Earle served as state highway commissioner until 1909. Known as "the Father of Good Roads," Earle helped open the state to commerce and tourism. Monuments were erected in Cass City and Mackinaw City in his honor. Although aprecciative, Earle stated "the monument I prize most is not measured by its height, but its length in miles". Registered state site No. 688, 2005 Erected by Employees and Friends of MDOT in its Centennial Year, 2005
Read more about this topic: Horatio Earle
Famous quotes containing the words registered, historical and/or site:
“But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)