Jefferson County's Notorious Bad Highways 1917

In 1917, the state board of education issued a wide-ranging study about Jefferson County entitled, "A Survey of Jefferson County, Indiana, for Purposes of Vocational Education." It delved into the county's economic needs, along with making numerous recommendations for consolidation of schools as part of its plan to promote the establishment of vocational education schools. Several state education officers, William Millis, president of Hanover College, The field work was done by Mr. Robert J. Millis and Mr. Fletcher N. Hufford, students in sociology in Hanover College, along with Joseph H. Hanna, County Superintendent of Schools and Professor Glenn Culbertson, Professor of Agriculture in Hanover College. Culbertson grew up in the Scottish settlement. The group approved a report that carried damning information about the county's roads.

REPORT OF THE EVANSVILLE SURVEY FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION CHARLES H. WINSLOW STATE DIRECTOR OF VOCATIONAL RESEARCH January 1, 1917 APPROVED BY STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION

"A definite program for highway improvement should be adopted. This program should provide for the active construction and repair of roads and bridges with reference to permanency of improvement and within a budget which, while sufficient for tangible results, would not embarrass the development of the county in other respects. The inefficiency of road building and repair in Jefferson County is notorious and is clue primarily to three causes: (1) The lack of a definite program to be followed for a term of years, the result of which is the construction of unimportant roads, while the main highways have been left to deteriorate to the vanishing point. (2) Incompetent engineering. (3) Political abuse of the office of County Road Superintendent. The present county officials are, in the main, efficient, but have little or no control over the construction work. The county has ample deposits of first-class materials for road building, but too often the engineer authorizes poor material and the result is that many roads must be rebuilt before the bonds issued on the original construction have been paid. With this poor return for the money invested, it is significant to find that 41% of the public funds collected from the tax payers is expended on roads and bridges. It is believed by the Committee that this is too large an investment to entrust to the care of inefficient management of road construction and repair in vogue."