Pulaski County GaArchives History .....Highway Development 1935
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 July 28, 2004, 10:07 pm

PULASKI COUNTY AND ITS HIGHWAYS
A ROMANCE IN HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT

   Pulaski County builded better than it dreamed, when, on May 9, 1919, it voted
bonds to bridge the 0cmulgee River, the first bridge to span the 0cmulgee south
of Macon, for it provided a gateway for all east and northeast Georgia to cross
into west and southwest portions of our State, and to furnish a key city to the
State Highway Department in the layout of the state-aid system of highways, and
made Hawkinsville the terminal county seat of highways leading in from five
adjoining county capitals-Perry, Cochran, Eastman, Abbeville, Oglethorpe, and
later the road to Vienna was taken into the state system, and brought to
Hawkinsville the just title of "Hawkinsville, the Highway Hub."

   These several highways were dignified by numbers in the state system, but
were no better than the original county roads taken into the system, for the
State Highway Department lacked funds for any improvement or a construction
program. The Federal government could supply 50 per cent of the needed funds,
but even at that the State could not match the gift, and therefore required
counties to put up 25 per cent of the cost of all improvements, which made the
out-look hopeless for Pulaski County, already bonded for bridges, and carrying a
large current indebtedness.

   This was the situation faced by the County Commissioner in assuming office in
1924, when he conceived the idea of matching Federal and State funds with labor.
He entered into contracts with the State Highway Department to grade and install
concrete culverts and bridges on State route number 11 leading north, and on
February 6, 1926, began construction under a contract that supplied 75 per cent
of the cost, leaving the 25 per cent to accumulate to be refunded, maybe, along
with reimbursement for bonds issued for bridges. The initial work of grading
completed, the county entered into a contract

p. 94

to pave this seven-mile stretch, again using county road forces in executing the
contract, and on May 5, 1928, with the placing on the lime rock base, laid by
county forces, of an asphalt top by the MacDougald Construction Company of
Atlanta, Pulaski County had delivered to it its first paved highway. This
initial contract totaled $124,772.16, the State paying in cash $93,579.12, and
the county holds reimbursement certificates for $31,193.04. There was an element
of romance in the undertaking-the fact that the organization was untrained in
such effort, county treasury without funds, and to "get by" with the 75 per cent
of the construction cost reflected happily on the administration.

   The governing authority of the county, invested in a sole Commissioner of
Roads and Revenues, J. J. Whitfield, continued the pro-gram of highway
improvement, supporting the county's chain-gang and all road forces out of the
proceeds from these several contracts with the State Highway Department, and on
the completion of the initial project north, began immediately on State Route
number 27, U. S. number 341, from the east end of the river bridge to the Dodge
County line, and completed it in time to start in January, 1930, on grading the
Dixie Highway south to the Wilcox County line. The improvement to the Cochran
highway followed, then on the Montezuma highway.

   County forces, under contract with the State, placed a clay gravel base on
the Montezuma highway, and were then given a contract for a similar treatment
for the Cochran highway, the State Highway Department, planning with its forces,
to place the asphalt surface treatment.

   The State let to contract the placing of a lime rock base with surface
treatment on the Eastman highway, and on about half of the Abbeville highway.

   The program of highway improvement inaugurated in 1926, will culminate by the
end of 1935 with the paving of five of the six high-ways in the county, at a
total cost of approximately three-quarters of a million dollars of public
improvement of bridges and highways-no small achievement for a small county.
Only the Vienna highway remains unimproved of the six highways entering
"Hawkinsville, the Highway Hub."



Additional Comments:
Extracted from 


"HISTORY OF PULASKI COUNTY GEORGIA"

OFFICIAL HISTORY

COMPILED BY THE HAWKINSVILLE CHAPTER
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
PRESS OF WALTER W. BROWN PUBLISHING COMPANY
ATLANTA, GEORGIA

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