History
The predecessor agency to ODOT was the Department of Highways, which began operations in 1911, four years after Oklahoma statehood. The Department of Highways, consisting of four employees, was given an initial budget of $3,700. The state's first 29 numbered highways were commissioned on August 29, 1924. As of May 1, 1926, the state highway system consisted of 3,682 miles (5,926 km) of graded dirt roads (72% of the system), 832 miles (1,339 km) of gravel roads (16%), and 634 miles (1,020 km) of paved roads, for a total system length of 5,148 miles (8,285 km). By March 1, 1930, the department name had been modified slightly to simply the Oklahoma Department of Highways.
In 1976, the Oklahoma Legislature restructured the Department of Highways as an overall coordinating agency for the state’s highways, railways and waterways and renamed to the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.
Read more about this topic: Oklahoma Department Of Transportation
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“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)