(NOTE: This episode is being posted two days early just in case we lose connectivity in the forecasted thunder/hailstorm later today.) Today, as travelers outside the Beaver State’s borders know well, Oregon’s roads are merely average, or maybe slightly above average, in terms of crowdedness and quality. Certainly other states tend to have more and wider interstate freeways.

But you don’t have to go too far back into the past to find a time when Oregon’s highway system was something rather special.

It’s a legacy that goes all the way back to the dawn of motoring; when the Good Roads movement got started, it really took off in Oregon, starting in the early 1910s with the nationally famous Columbia Gorge Highway.

But the true reason for the lion’s share of Oregon’s transformation into a midcentury motorist’s paradise is much more prosaic:

Our state was the first in the nation to levy a gasoline tax to fund its highway system. (Forest Grove, Washington County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2402b-0905b.oregon-highways-gas-tax-025.635.html)