The Motor City ignited the roaring 1920s.
Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors, each Detroit, MichiganBy the early 20s, Ford had grown into one of the three largest automakers in the world. Customers needed somewhere to go to rev their engines—and a safe, convenient way to get there.
The task fell on the shoulders of small-town visionaries from Michigan who paved the way for Automobile Leaving the city and becoming synonymous with the open American highway.
Allen Williams, rural Ionia County’s first highway engineer, perhaps proved the most influential among them.
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He conceived of and built America’s first roadside rest area in 1929. The idea became more popular 40 years later than a big block Motown muscle car.
However, the highway rest stop was just one of the most visible of many contributions Williams made to the speed, safety, and convenience of the U.S. highway system, from which we all benefit today.
Alan Williams of the Ionia County Road Commission speaks at a bridge dedication luncheon in downtown Ionia, Michigan. (Michigan Department of Transportation)
“He lived at a time when he had the ability to do some big things and make some big changes, not only in Michigan but in our nationwide history,” Sigrid Bergland, a historian for the Michigan Department of Transportation, told Fox News Digital.
Highway maps, road signs, and even snow removal equipment were influenced by his curiosity, intelligence, diverse skills, and foresight.
“He was truly a Renaissance man.”
Williams proved to be a civic leader in both peacetime and wartime.
He helped improve little-used roads in his small town life.
“He was a really interesting Michelangelo-type of all-around interesting person who did a lot of different things in his lifetime and who, incidentally, was a person who did a lot of different things in his lifetime.” Transportation Engineer“He was truly a Renaissance man,” Bergland said.
Fun, freedom and ‘automobiling’
Allan Mackenzie Williams was born in 1892 Ludington, Michigan To Joseph and Isabel (Cogswell) Williams.
The future American Roadmaster apparently inherited his varied interests and natural talent for fixing things from his father.
Roadside picnic on the Wisconsin side of the road, 1917. Mary E. Smith sits with a friend on a white blanket with a thermos and picnic basket. Their car is parked next to a fence along the road. (Historical Society/Getty Images)
According to the Michigan DOT, the elder Williams left a career as a camp cook to pursue a career as an electrical engineer.
“He opened and operated an electrical shop, and installed electrical wiring in the first home in Ludington,” the state agency reported.
The younger Williams studied engineering University of Michigan He studied in Ann Arbor and then transferred to Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo.
In 1919 he found his life’s goal, then only 20 years of age, and was appointed to the position of county engineer on the Ionia County Road Commission.
Very few roads were paved at the time, explains Bergland of the Michigan DOT.
Chuck “The Viking” Heydon, publisher of the travel blog Restals-Viking.com, on the first U.S. highway rest stop: Route 16, Ionia County, Michigan. (Martha and Chuck Hayden/restless-viking.com)
But automobiles manufactured in Detroit, 130 miles east, were becoming more affordable, growing in popularity, and spreading across the American countryside.
“The elite chauffeur-driven crowd was about to be left behind by the masses, who wanted the fun and freedom that came with ‘automobiling,'” auto journalist Nick Kurczewski wrote in 2016.
“The public … wanted the fun and freedom that came with ‘automobiling.'”
Michigan’s highway engineers were the first people in a position to see and then shape the future of automobile travel. Convenience was an early necessity.
Williams, apparently before the winter of 1928, “observed A family trying to eat “He had a picnic lunch from a large tree trunk next to his parked car on a road that was under county jurisdiction,” American Road Builder magazine reported in 1957.
Detroit, Michigan: The Ford family and friends go for a drive through the streets of Detroit in a 1906 Model K-6 cylinder auto. Left to right: Henry Ford, Leroy Pelletier, Clara Ford, Edsel Ford and a telephone operator. (Getty Images)
“(They) were served a delicious breakfast on a white cloth on the stump, but they could not actually enjoy the meal, as they could not sit around their makeshift table, and had to be content with eating standing or sitting on stones or the bare ground.”
Williams had some extra lumber lying around in the Ionia Country Road Commission garage — and a vision.
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The automobile first became a major part of the American landscape in the 1920s.
The number of registered cars in Michigan alone more than quadrupled during the decade, rising from 326,000 in 1919 to 1.4 million.
Williams also witnessed similar scenes traveller having meal with increasing frequency along the roadside.
General Motors assembly line, showing an early engine circa 1920. (Photosearch/Getty Images)
According to the American Road Builder, “Being an outdoorsman himself, he decided that people should have better facilities for resting and refreshing themselves along the highways.”
“During the winter months, when some of his snow removal crews were standing around in the county garage waiting out a potential storm, he put them to work building picnic tables out of 2×4 pieces of lumber.”
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According to the Michigan DOT, they used “leftover wood from railings or other surplus lumber,” while Bergland said the tables “probably had a lot of pieces sticking out.”
Allen Williams, county engineer of the Ionia County (Michigan) Road Commission, built the first highway rest area in the US on Route 16 in Michigan in 1929. (Michigan Department of Transportation)
The tables were painted green and placed on Route 16, three miles south of the village of Saranac.
“My dad thought he’d get a scolding for using that plaque,” the engineer’s son, Colin Williams (then 84 years old), said in a 2011 interview with MLive.com.
William’s roadside rest area went, in today’s terms, viral.
“Bawlin” never came.
Instead, praise came from far and wide. Williams’ roadside rest area went, in today’s terms, viral.
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According to MLive.com, “The state highway department received more than 500 written feedback from motorists from places as far away as Washington, Florida and Texas.”
Williams’s vision for relieving highways spread as quickly as construction crews were pouring concrete for the new roads.
A sign on Route 16 in Ionia County, Michigan marks the location of the United States’ first highway rest stop. (Martha and Chuck Hayden/restless-viking.com)
By 1937, nearly 1,500 picnic tables had been installed in Michigan, many of the first ones built by Williams’ employees in Ionia County.
Eventually the state took over the responsibility. By 1947 the number of roadside picnic tables in Michigan reached 2,500.
Today, there are 1,400 full-service highway rest areas along America’s interstate highways, according to InterstateRestAreas.com.
They have countless picnic tables and seats available.
‘This is a guy from a small town in Michigan!’
Alan Williams reportedly died in 1979.
He was 87 and was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in his hometown of Ludington.
Alan Williams, far left, at the dedication ceremony of the M-66 bridge in Ionia, Michigan. (Michigan Department of Transportation)
“Michigan was certainly the site of many ‘firsts’ in transportation — and highways in particular — history,” Chris Bessert, publisher of MichiganHighways.org, wrote in an email to Fox News Digital.
He wrote that Williams was at the center of it all.
“He designed and issued the first state highway road map… He championed the construction of highways on rights-of-way wider than the standard 66-foot space used up to that point, he designed Michigan’s state highway route marker and expanded its use, and many other firsts.”
“The State Highway Department received more than 500 pieces of written feedback on the table locations.”
William’s influence was also felt closer to home.
“He has left a legacy in Ionia County,” travel bloggers Martha and Chuck “The Viking” Hayden wrote on Restless-Viking.com.
He was for many years president of the Ionia County Free Fair, which remains one of the largest in the state, helped build the Ionia County Airport, and was chairman of the county hospital board.
The first highway rest stop in 1929 was a few roadside picnic tables on Route 16 in Michigan. They soon became an American phenomenon. Just south of the border in Dillon, South Carolina, is one of the country’s most flamboyant roadside attractions. John Margolis Roadside America Photograph Archive, 1986. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
When the United States entered second World WarWilliams oversaw Ionia County’s efforts to convert scrap metal into munitions.
“He was a very civilized person, very interested in helping people and giving back and finding different ways to contribute to his community,” said Bergland, of the Michigan DOT. “He was a big-idea guy.”
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Governor William Milliken presented Williams with the Michigan Tourism Award in 1976, recognizing the engineer’s contributions to encouraging tourists to the state.
There is, however, some dispute over the story of the origins of the Williams rest area.
“Some documents indicate that Connecticut built its first site in 1928,” reports RestAreaHistory.org. “However, more solid evidence points to Michigan and a site built in 1929.”
Other evidence suggests that Herbert Larson, road commissioner of Iron County in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, installed roadside picnic tables as early as 1919.
Allen Williams (far left) was the first engineer on the Ionia County (Michigan) Road Commission when he conceived of America’s first highway rest area in 1929. Today a sign on Route 16 in Michigan marks this historic site along the American road. (Michigan Department of Transportation; Martha and Chuck Hayden/restless-viking.com)
But according to Bessert, Larson’s incident was an isolated incident, while what Williams did became a state and then national incident.
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“Williams’ role in the early development of Michigan’s highway system was imitated and copied around the world,” Bessert writes.
“This is something that should not be underestimated. And this was just a guy from a small town in Michigan!”
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