Daviess County Connection More than Trivial

My latest smart phone addiction is something called Trivia Crack. The app is aptly named; six categories of short questions tease and taunt me to try just one more time whenever I miss my guess. Thus, I can waste time while under the guise of learning tidbits about all sorts of stuff that essentially don’t matter.

But trivia gets you thinking. Sometimes takes you to unexpected places. For instance, who’d have thought anyone about to celebrate the bicentennial in Trigg County, KY, would connect whatever goings on there with someone from Coffey, MO?

Recently I received an historical account that identifies Coffey native Mack Galbreath as one of the men who made a permanent impression on the physical landscape of Trigg County that’s still

obvious today. Mack helped pull Kentucky out of the mud.

Let me introduce you to Mack Galbreath …er, rather, let Ricky Dale Calhoun, Ph.D. of the Trigg County Historical Society do the honors. Here’s what Dr. Calhoun writes.

When Mack Galbreath first stepped off the train in Cadiz, KY, a hundred years ago Trigg County’s public roads had not been improved since before the Civil War. The county, located in the southwest portion of the state, had a transportation infrastructure considered among the nation’s worst and the county’s residents had little inclination to improve it.

The 1915 edition of the Official Automobile Blue Book described the Trigg County portion as “poor dirt roads.” An example of driving directions were quoted as “Fork, blacksmith shop in angle  road goes to Calloway Ferry; bear right with poles on rough, narrow road, using caution not to mistake creek bed for road. Continue ahead on poor road, using extreme caution for numerous chuck holes and bad ditches.”

On Jan. 25, 1913, Trigg County voters rejected a proposal to issue $150,000 in bonds for the building of roads by a vote of 1,359 to 544. Local newspapers said voters set themselves back for a generation. But that’s when a young highway engineer emerged to prove the newspapers wrong.

Mack Galbreath, was born on a farm near Coffey, a small country store and rural post office community here in north Daviess County on June 12, 1887. Little is known about Galbreath prior to when he enrolled in the University of Missouri on June 3, 1907.

Mack was popular and outgoing, as is evidenced by frequent mentions of him in the University Missourian newspaper. His time as a student was marked by an adventure that very nearly cost him his life during a summer job with a party of government land surveyors working along the St. Regis River in Montana.

Mack graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in civil engineering in the spring of 1912. He was employed by the United States Bureau of Public Roads sometime prior to Oct. 1, 1913, when he reported for his first job assignment at Mount Sterling, KY. His task was to assist the senior engineer in surveying the route which was later to become U.S. Highway 68.

Public relations to win popular support for building good roads was an integral part of Galbreath’s job. Newspapers along the route of U.S. 68 made frequent mentions of him being “in town  in the interest of good roads” in the years leading up to and during World War I.

In July 1914 he was sent to North Carolina to oversee construction of two “object lesson roads” or demonstration projects, one in Alamance County and the other in Davie, Forsyth, and Iredell counties along what later became the route of U.S. 64. The road projects kept Galbreath in North Carolina until the end of August, 1915.

The stay in North Carolina was not all work and no play for the young engineer, however. Mack Galbreath managed to find the time to court and marry Miss Edith Swicegood, the daughter of a prominent family there. Upon his return to Kentucky, Mack Galbreath was given leave of absence from his federal job and placed “in charge of the bond issue road work in Trigg County for the Kentucky State Highway Commission.”

In 1917 Galbreath was recalled to federal government service and sent to Chicago to work in support of the U.S. mobilization for the First World War.

The advent of aerial bombing during the First World War made good roads a matter of national defense. Although the idea seems groundless today given the limited range of military aircraft in the interwar years, many people at the time feared that in a future war an enemy might attack and destroy America’s railroads from the air, and thus cripple the country’s ability to defend against invasion. Good roads and motorized road transport would negate that threat.

So on July 11, 1916, Congress passed the Federal Aid Road Act, a law that provided up to $10,000 per mile in matching funds to the states for construction of rural roads. Though the 1916 act was not originally intended for defense, war mobilization mandated that the roads that were built serve the war effort.

Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 on Nov. 9, 1921, and in early 1922 commissioned Gen. John J. Pershing to map routes for highways that would be needed for defense in case of war. The two acts made large amounts of federal road construction money available for the first time.

Mack Galbreath returned to Kentucky in 1920 and took up residence in Frankfort as District Engineer, U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. The Crittenden Press reported that in 1920 Galbreath was “responsible for $1,500,000 in Federal aid to roads in Kentucky.”

Galbreath steered what seems a disproportionate amount of the money to Trigg County. Jefferson County got the largest amount, $239,655, while Trigg County, with far less people, received $168,330, which was far more than was spent in any other county of comparable population.

Galbreath was not showing political favoritism. Though it was not on the map of vital defense highways drawn by Gen. Pershing, Galbreath evidently believed that the U.S. 68 route was a vital east-west complement to the north-south U.S. 41, which was on Pershing’s map.

Mack oversaw federal road work in Kentucky for more than 40 years, until he retired in 1956. During that time he steadfastly refused to be swayed by political considerations.

Galbreath insisted on spending federal money on projects that would do the most good for the most people over the widest area, and refused to spend it on “boondoggles” demanded by local political bosses as patronage.

His most notable run-in with the state’s political elite happened in the summer of 1932, when Ben Johnson, the powerful chairman of the state highway commission, demanded that Galbreath be removed from his job after he recommended against federal funding for one of Johnson’s pet projects. Thomas H. McDonald, chief of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, declared flatly, “It will not be done.”

When Mack Galbreath died in Frankfort on April 14, 1957, Trigg County’s “Bottomless Mud Roads” were a thing of the past. Bulldozers were at work building new roads where none had existed before.

Paved country roads now stand as an enormous county-wide monument to Mack Galbreath, infrastructure that few people could have imagined when the young civil engineer from Missouri got off the train in Cadiz 100 years ago.

Dr. Calhoun sent this information to us as Trigg County, KY, prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2020. As part of the lead up to the bicentennial, the Historical Society is researching short biographies of people, some well known and some not, from the county’s past.

This story kinda makes you wonder who else from Daviess County likewise has made such a mark in this world.