University Dally Kansan, April 23, 1981
Page 5
Highway
From page 1
These reflectorized aluminum signs are mounted on breakaway poets.
In studies conducted by the Kansas Department of Transportation before and after the installation of the signs, it was found that the accident rate dropped from 3.7 accidents per million vehicle miles to 2.2 accidents per million vehicle miles.
KDOT statistics listed the average statewide accident rate for all two-lane rural Kansas highways as 1.5 accidents per million vehicle miles.
MIKE LACKEY, KDOT district one engineer,
said the highway had been paved last summer
and, except for routine maintenance, no major
changes were planned.
This section of 40 was a trail and then a dirt road before becoming part of the Victory Bridge.
Gen. Harry Smith, former commander of Fort Leavenworth, spoke at the 1923 opening of the museum.
"On this same highway the great trade route to Mexico and the lower California was laid out in the 1850s and 1860s," Smith said then. "And over this same ground moved the homekeepers who went with their household goods of Oregon and Washington and the Pacific northwest."
THIS STRETCH of the Victory Highway also is remembered for the slavery battle that boiled along its route. Big Springs, Tecumseh, Lawrence all were involved in this bitter dispute.
Lecompton, just a couple of miles north of the
highway, was designated as the slave capital of Kansas, and Topeka, as its free capital.
The yellow and blue signs that once marked mileage along the Victory Highway have faded away, as has the glory once associated with this pioneering highway.
But with a pamphlet published around 1922 by the Victory Highway Association in Topeka, most of the old highway can be traced on a current Kansas man.
HIGHWAY 24 between Topeka and Wamogo is part of the old highway, and most of the other remnants of the highway are narrow two-lane roads that have numbers and run parallel to modern Interstate 70.
Another memory from the days of the Victory Highway's glory is a memorial marker that stands in Topeka's Gage Park. The marker was erected by Mr. Baldwin in 1923 and the Shawnee County-Douglas County line in 1923.
It was planned that a memorial marker would be placed at each county line along the highway. On these markers an eagle with a 3/4-foot wingspan was poised over a nest. Below the nest, we could histallist the names of the county's World War I dead. The memorials each were to be 11 feet tall.
TWO MORE of these memorials also were dedicated along the Victory High way in 1923, one near Warnego and one on the Douglas County-Leavenworth County line.
The Victory Highway, originally an 18-foot wide concrete road, was quite modern for its time and was the dream of a man named Ben Blow.
In 1920, while Blow was working for the California State Automobile Association, he
Blow was drawn to Topeka by news of the construction of the Fort-to-Fort Highway, a Leavenworth to Fort Riley road that took McNerney, a Tonganite lumberward operator.
consulted with Federal Bureau of Roads' engineers in various states, seeking a series of roads that could be linked together and improved.
While in Topeka, he interested a group of men in his idea of a transcontinental paved highway that also would be a memorial to the men and women who served and died in World War I. The Victory Highway Association was formed, and Blow was chosen as its manager.
BLOW CONQUERED the few obstacles that
remained after the Kansas link had been assured. He found a path across the western Utah desert and the Continental Divide, and he pushed for road improvement in Missouri.
The paving of the Victory Highway was completed in sections.
The same road did not go through both Kansas and Missouri, but paved roads from each met at Tamponsauga.
BY THE END of 1923, the Victory Highway had been paved from New York to St. Charles, Mo., 21 miles west of St. Louis, and from Kansas City, Mo., to San Francisco.
The final link, St. Charles to Kansas City, was completed by 1926.
At the end of 1923, the Topeka Journal reported
the cost of the recently completed Kansas City to Topeka highway.
"The concrete ribbon connecting the five cities and numerous intervening communities represents an outlay of more than $3 million, generating a state highway department," the Journal said.
The article went on to shock its reader with a per-mile cost figure.
Howard said that today the cost of building a rural highway would be about $400,000 per mile.
"The average cost per mile, including bridges and culverts, of which there are 34 of the larger kind, was $43,000, according to the state highway department." it said.
Solbach
From page 1
The Legislature and Regents had an unwritten agreement that all in-state students would pay at least 25 percent of the total cost of their education to all state-students would pay slightly more.
The 25 percent figure was to be proportionate to the total costs of the individual schools. For example, a KU student would pay proportional costs as an Emperor State University student.
The Legislative Research Department said KU students paid 22 percent this year.
Solbach questioned the value of the Regents 25 percent policy.
"The increase in fees forced upon the students is a higher education tax," Solbach said. "I'm not sure if it's true."
HE SAID the state should pick up the total cost of education, which would lure more students to Kansas and possibly convince more of them to stay.
But the state's options for picking up the full tab were limited, Solbach said.
HOWEVER, SOLBACH said he thought the Regents were making a point by voting in the increase.
"It makes the point that the Legislature has cut into muscle and bone," he said. According to Solbach, there will be efforts to restore money to the program so it can continue to reconvene for a three-day veto session April 28.
"We're going to need a severance tax or sales tax to free up the general fund money for education."
But the amendment to the omnibus appropriations bill to be considered then would only afford $250,000 to the budget to pay for the purchase and periodicals for the library system, he said.
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