Californians can’t get from place to place on little fairy wings. We are a car-centered state. We need roads.
― Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2005
If this recent assessment by the Governator were true, imagine how much more such a conclusion would’ve been decades ago across the South.
With the rise of the automobile as America’s preferred means of transportation, there was a pressing need for passable roads. With dirt roads, only a hard rain away from turning into a quagmire, businessmen, farmers, and politicians worked ― often against each other ― to provide their customers and constituents paved paths of mobility. Tammy Ingram’s Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the Modern South, 1900-1930 chronicles the push toward modernity. Good Southern folk like many of you will enjoy the narrative.
Today we take for granted the ease of getting from one place to another. Our nation’s network of interstate highways, championed by President Eisenhower, have dramatically impacted American life. As people move from place to place, and few places in our country remain remote and inaccessible, there is more cross-pollination between regions than ever before.
Getting in and out of Pinnacle lately has been, uh, challenging. But new and better roads are the price of progress.
The sophisticated network of roads in the ancient Roman Empire was likely a reason God chose that particular time and place in history for the Savior to be born of Mary. The Bible’s declaration “In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4), reminds us that travel and communication made possible by good roads spreads the Gospel.
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