National highways preliminary map of the state of New Mexico : showing forty-one hundred miles of national highways proposed by the National Highways Association / National Highways Association

The National Highways Association (NHA) was established in 1911 to promote the development of an improved national road network in the United States. Under the slogan “Good roads for everyone!” the NHA advocated the building and permanent maintenance by the federal government of a system of 50,000 miles (some 80,500 kilometers) of highways. This system was to be composed of six main national highways, 13 trunk national highways, and 40 link highways. The link highways, the NHA explained, would connect “the Mains and Trunks” and reach out “in all directions until the country as a whole is covered with almost a spider-web tracery of highways.” This map issued by the NHA in 1913 shows the proposed system, with colors used to denote the different categories of highways. Besides issuing brochures and circulars aimed at convincing citizens of the need for a national road system, the NHA was a prolific producer of maps. Cartographic work was done at an office in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts,

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