Short History of Roads and Highways - Thomas MacDonald
The son of John and Sarah Elizabeth Harris MacDonald was native to Leadville, Colorado. During his childhood he received his education at elementary and high school at public schools in Montezuma, Iowa after his family moved to Iowa. His father owned lumber and grain dealerships, which required transportation of grain and lumber on horse drawn wooden wagons. The poor state of the roads, which were impassable for much of the year, disgusted him. He attended college Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts. He studied road building and became involved in the Good Roads movement after graduating with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1904. He married he married Elizabeth Dunham in 1907. The couple would have two children. He received appointment as the Assistant in Charge of Good Roads Investigation in Iowa that year. He became Iowa's head civil engineer in 1913 and played an instrumental role in the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916. Congress appointed him as the head of the Bureau of Public Roads on July 1, 1919. He would remain at the head of the bureau until his retirement in 1953. During his tenure he was the chief architect of the highway system in the United States. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 was his innovation. He supervised the construction of 3.5 million miles of highways and helped lay the foundation for Eisenhower's U.S. Interstate Highway System.
