State-of-the-Roads Report

Random road-related items, from mid-April to mid-May 1920 …

South Main Street is getting paved, but not fast enough for this fruit truck; a team of horses finally saves the day.


(Click on images to enlarge)

In this ad, Goodrich makes bad roads a selling point for its tires.



The Gazette of April 23, 1920, was just full of road tidbits.



The last News of April added: "The work of grading Indiana and Lillian streets is about completed ready for the pavers."

By early May 1920, the Lake County commissioners were considering a proposed cement road running from Gary to Miller, then north to Lake Michigan and east to the Porter County line, thus cutting across northern Hobart Township. (According to, e.g., the 1926 Plat Book, Hobart Township extended north to Lake Michigan at the time.) The proposed road would consist of two 20-foot-wide cement lanes divided by a 20-foot median. From the heights of Indiana Ridge, John Dorman wrote an open letter supporting the proposal, as it would help make Hobart "a high class suburb to Gary."



Of course, everyone favors good roads, but not everyone favors paying for them; and when the county commissioners met on May 10 for a vote, they had before them a remonstrance signed by "several hundred" Hobart Township citizens who protested that the road's $250,000 cost was more than the township could afford. And in the end the commissioners voted down the road proposal.


Sources:
♦ Advertisement. Hobart News 22 Apr. 1920.
♦ "John F. Dorman Favors Good Roads." 7 May 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 15 Apr. 1920; 29 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 23 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Road Petition Denied." Hobart Gazette 14 May 1920.
♦ "Who Will Pay?" Hobart Gazette 23 Apr. 1920.