New Deal Accomplishment: Over 1.5 million miles of roadwork

Above: America's roads--and especially its secondary roads--are in terrible condition, as the 2025 Infrastructure Report Card from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) notes (and as our daily drives will confirm!). Potholes, patches on top of patches, rough culvert backfill, deeply recessed manholes & grates, alligator cracking, and more await us all. Image from the Washington State Department of Transportation and the American Society of Civil Engineers; used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: Estimates of roadwork completed by the New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA), 1933-1934, range from 200,000 miles to 500,000 miles. More CWA workers were employed on roadwork than any other type of project. The work consisted of "hundreds of bridges large and small, thousands of culverts, hundreds of retaining walls, numerous tunnels and underpasses, and extensive excavation operations." Quote and photo from: Henry G. Alsberg, America Fights the Depression: A Photographic Record of the Civil Works Administration, New York: Coward-McCann Publishers, 1934, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: This photo comes from the final report of the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), and notes the 244,000 miles of roadwork completed from 1934-1935.

Above: The New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA) built many of the highways that we ride on today, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike (learn more about the turnpike's history with its interactive timeline). Between 1933 and 1939, the PWA financed at least 36,638 miles of new or improved roads and highways. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A completed section of the PWA-financed, 165-mile long Pennsylvania Turnpike, February 1941. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A new four-lane highway for Revere, Massachusetts, ca. 1937, constructed with PWA funds. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Above: Enrollees in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) working on Mandahl Road, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, ca. 1935. Across America, the Triple C's created 126,230 miles of new truck trails and roads, and maintained another 580,995 miles of road (see p. 105 of CCC director's final report). These roads facilitated quicker response time for wildfires, as well as improved visitor access to our state and national parks and forests. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A National Youth Administration (NYA) project to improve road access to a cemetery in Minersville, Utah, ca. 1939. Between 1935 and 1943, the NYA built or expanded at least 3,201 miles of "Highways, roads, streets, and alleys," and reconstructed or improved another 13,726 miles. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: In just its first fiscal year, the WPA's roadwork was extensive. And by the end of the program in 1943, WPA workers had constructed or improved 651,087 miles of road, largely in rural areas. Image from an October 1936 WPA progress report.

Above: WPA roadwork meant a lot to rural states, as this excerpt from a 1941 West Virginia State Road Commission report makes clear. Today, West Virginia's secondary roads are on a ridiculously long 30-year repavement schedule which often leaves them in horrible condition (see, "2020 Report Card for West Virginia's Infrastructure," American Society of Civil Engineers, pp. 33-36). West Virginia's roads could definitely use a new WPA.

Above: WPA workers constructing the Cotton-Amma farm-to-market road in Roane County, West Virginia, between 1935 and 1943. The WPA built farm-to-market roads all across the nation so that farmers could more consistently get their produce and goods to market. Before this WPA initiative, farmers frequently had to contend with muddy and impassable roads. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: More rural roads by the WPA. Photos from a WPA progress report, June 30, 1940. 

Above: A WPA work camp for the Wolf Creek Highway project in Oregon, ca. 1938. This large construction project was designed to improve access to Oregon's beaches and coastline (see, e.g., "Wolf Creek Road Being Built To High Standards," Oregon Journal (Portland, Oregon), September 11, 1938, section 4, p. 6). Photo from the National Archives.

Above: The WPA at work on the Wolf Creek Highway. Photo by Ralph Gifford, Oregon State Highway Department, in the Oregon Journal (Portland, Oregon), June 19, 1938, section 4, p. 4. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: Beautiful, smooth, and handcrafted (!) new pavement for Loch Raven Boulevard in Baltimore, Maryland, courtesy of the WPA, July 1936 (also see, "27 1/2 Miles City Streets Paved... Concrete Surfacing Of Loch Raven Boulevard One Of Most Ambitious Of Projects," The Baltimore Sun, October 11, 1936, p. 22). Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives.

Above: WPA roads improved access to military bases and defense industries, and thus played an important role in America's victory in World War II. Photo from a WPA progress report, June 30, 1941.

Above: "The Roads," an oil painting by Gerrit Hondius (1891-1970), created while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, between 1935 and 1939. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The New Deal Road Builders

There a few different ways we might calculate total New Deal roadwork, but if we evaluate all of the numbers above, and then leave out the CWA's extensive roadwork (see statistical note below), it is clear that the New Deal completed over 1.5 million miles of roadwork. That's enough roadwork to go around the Earth 60 times. Some of this roadwork was new, some of it consisted of improving existing roads, and all of it was beneficial to the country. New Deal roadwork employed millions, facilitated more comfortable and extensive travel, aided national defense, and was a vital part of the foundation that our post-World War II economy grew upon.

(Statistical note: Due to a variety of factors--such as (a) single work projects that spanned over the course of multiple work-relief agencies, (b) more than one agency working on the same project at the same time, and (c) inadequate reporting--calculating the total New Deal work product for any category of projects can range from mildly challenging to extraordinarily difficult. I therefore use several methods--for example, leaving out the work product of one or more agencies--to keep the estimates modest, as opposed to overblown. My earliest blog posts go into these difficulties and methods in more detail.)