Photo Gallery

Photo courtesy

Missouri Department

of Highways and Transportation.

On the St. Charles-Columbia road. (Woodcut) Courtesy of Missouri State Historical Society, Columbia.

Building plank road. Section of the Thomas Hart Benton mural, City of Columbia, Courtesy of State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.

Lloyd Matthews Collection, Center for Ozarks Studies.

Note bed of logs, center foreground. Logs or poles were often embedded in places that would otherwise be impassable in wet weather. One observer said, "Sometimes they stayed, and sometimes they washed out in the first rain."

Steam-powered road roller, ca. 1924.

Note the chain-and-capstan steering system, decreeing that 'power steering" must indeed be done at the hands of the driver alone.

Early Missouri State Highway Department center-line marking machine.

Current-driven ferry. The ferry, tethered to a steel cable by a rolling wheel, is moving toward the near shore. To return, the hull will be canted at an opposite angle, and the current will force it to the far shore.

Suspension bridge over Osage River, Missouri --probably

Miller County. Note single-lane roadway. Such bridges were typically replaced by reinforced concrete arch bridges beginning in the late 1920's.

Union Covered Bridge, Monroe County, Missouri, old photograph. Now a State Historic Site, the facade has been modified to a different appearance. Bridges were covered to protect the wooden structural members from the weather. Union Bridge is 125 feet long and 17 feet, six inches wide.

Union Covered Bridge, built in 1871, employed a double arch support system. The builder, Joseph C. Elliott, used wooden wedges and pins to join the rough-sawn oak timbers.

Elliott built several covered bridges in Missouri of which this was the last.

Commercial Street, Springfield, Missouri, ca. 1900. Frisco tracks behind buildings at right.

Phenix Quarry Station, northwest Greene County, Missouri (date not known).

Last Frisco station,(demolished).

Frisco yards and passenger platform, Springfield, 1940

Missouri State Patrol officer investigating a highway accident, 1930's.

Standard equipment of a Missouri State Highway Patrol car, late 1930's.

First review of the new Missouri State Highway Patrol, 1931. The military uniforms and drawn pistols suggested that the Patrol was intended to do more than merely direct traffic.

The original Missouri State Highway Patrol automobile (recent photograph). The 1931 Ford Model A roadsters were to be driven top down as much as possible in order to be readily recognized by the motoring public. They were not equipped with heaters.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Check, junction of US 63 and 54 north of Jefferson City, mid 1930's. The standard patrol car then was a two- door Chevrolet sedan.

Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper and regulation Harley-Davidson motorcycle, early 1930's. These fast, powerful machines were issued to a portion of the original 55 member patrol.