Building Nevada's Highways

Roads are rarely given a second thought yet are indispensable to life. Admittedly, a book dedicated to roadways sounds a bit dry. But behind every double-diamond interchange, every pork chop island, and every type of asphalt is a fascinating history of the traveling public. This book reveals the hidden history of building the Silver State's highways since 1917. The next time you take a road trip across Nevada on the Lincoln Highway (US 50) or the Victory Highway (US 40) or follow a rutted road to a once-booming ghost town think of the ingenious and industrious men and women, surveyors, engineers, chemists, and yes, even the teams of mules that built the roads we still travel today.

Jennifer E. Riddle, an archaeologist, and Elizabeth Dickey, an architectural historian, specialize in transportation history, architecture, and archaeology. In selecting photographs for this book, they are indebted to the Nevada Department of Transportation for allowing them access to nearly a century of images created by a lineage of intrepid highway department photographers.