From Roads to Highways

By Jan Griffith, Sr

Hello, in this book you will read the history of US and State roads that have been abandoned for newer safer built highways in and around Clinton County, Ohio along you will also read of the major improvements made to other US and State roads in and around Clinton County, Ohio as far back as late 1930s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jan Griffith, Sr
• Release date: Oct 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311964762

Jan Griffith, Sr

I am 69 years of age and I started putting my life history in print maybe 20 years ago on an 8088 computer and then i got away from it for a long time and about a year ago I learned of Smashwords.com from my granddaughters pen pal and it rekindled my need to finish my books and then I found a few more areas to write the history of and that brought me to publish my first book.I am married with two children and 9 grand children and am a retired Parts person and trying to enjoy life without having to be at a place of work everyday. My wife and I have been raising a large garden and selling some of our crops in our front yard.I have in the neighborhood of dozen books yet to be finished and published to Smashwords specs, I know I will enjoy finishing those books too! jansr..

Book preview

From Roads to Highways

By Jan L. Griffith Sr.

Smashwords Edition

Published by Jan L. Griffith Sr. on Smashwords

Roads to Highways

Copyright October 2014 by Jan Griffith Sr.

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book remains the copyright property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author.

Quotes used in reviews are the exception, no alterations of content allowed. If you enjoy reading this e-book then encourage your friends to download their own copy of this book.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is for General reading.

The idea for this book just kind of popped into my head one day while setting in my car in town while I was waiting on my wife to come out of the store.

In this book I will tell you to the best of my knowledge about all the state roads in Clinton County that have been up graded to improve the roads into highways so that they would be suitable for the faster and faster automobile traffic.

I have lived in and around Clinton County, Ohio all of my 65 years here on this earth.

Chapter One, the reason why;

The possible reason for the large increase in road improvements in the 40s and 50s might have been because of the CCC Act passed in the 1930s. This act put thousands of young unemployed men to work building highways as well as other valuable projects from Post Offices to Art galleries.

The men were housed in make shift camps that were nicked named 3C camps. There was a camp at the Sligo area that was named Camp Clinton my wife’s grandfather was in one of those camps when he was a young man. The purpose of the camps was to provide out of work men with jobs so they could feed their families as well provide a much needed service to the state and federal governments by working on various projects close to where they were camped.

This act provided millions of dollars for these projects. There is a web site on the internet show casing just a few of the projects that were completed by the 3C camps.

The Federal-aid Highway Act of 1956 this provided billions of dollars for the use of making improvements in current roads, the development and the construction of the Interstate Highway System thru out the United States. The Act called for the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways.

While President Eisenhower was a general in Germany he saw how smoothly traffic flowed in that country from one end of the country to the other with their network of highways; he felt that the United States needed to build highways to help with distribution of goods all across the country and in return would increase the nation’s economy.

It took him almost three years to get his ideas approved by the House and Senate before becoming a reality as the results above mentioned act.

Today they are still adding new interstate highways and connectors to the system thru out the United States.

I was a young child when the Highway Act went into effect and some of the roads in Clinton County, Ohio where improved into highways in the early 1960s.

There are several roads that were improved into highways in the 40s that I believe involved the WPA work force that was activated in the late 30’s. I have yet to put some concrete evidence of this being factual.

Chapter Two, US 68;

There are two U.S. routes that run thru Clinton County, one is a north-south highway and the other is an east-west highway.

The first one we will talk about is U S 68 which was also known as Wilmington-Xenia Road north of Wilmington and south of town it was known as Georgetown-Wilmington Road. These road names were used before the federal government passed laws putting the use of number systems in effect on all state and designated certain roads as US highways. The US highway signs had a different symbol from