U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for July 9: Paved With Good Inventions

WASHINGTON, July 9, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:

JULY 9: PAVED WITH GOOD INVENTIONS

Profile America — Sunday, July 9th. The first concrete road in America was completed on this date 125 years ago in Bellefontaine, Ohio — just as America entered the age of the automobile. The concrete road in 1892 followed by 22 years the country's first asphalt road, laid down in July 1870 on Newark, New Jersey'sWilliam Street. Still, even by 1904, there were only 154,000 miles of paved roads in the entire country. Such surfacing didn't reach a million miles until 1935. Today, there are about 4.2 million miles of public roads nationwide. Over 2.7 million of those road miles are paved — maintained and extended by America's 9,800 road and bridge construction firms. You can find current data on the country's economy by downloading the 'America's Economy' mobile application at www.census.gov/mobile.  

Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 6622 & 6621
1904 paved mileage/Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p. 710: www2.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970/hist_stats_colonial-1970p2-chQ.pdf 
U.S. road mileage/accessed 5/3/2017:   https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/xls/hm12.xls 
Road and Bridge Construction/County Business Patterns/ NAICS 23731: https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/BP/2015/00A1//naics~23731

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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau