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THE DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
THE EARLY YEARS
The face of transportation has changed dramatically since the General Assembly first passed laws governing the use
of automobiles in 1903. These laws, which required that all automobiles be equipped with a horn, bell or
similar device, and that drivers slow down their automobiles when approaching a horse or mule-drawn carriage, may seem
to be anachronistic today. But in that same year, the General Assembly also passed a State Aid Law, providing
for joint state-county funding of new road construction, thereby providing the basis through which a modern-day
highway department could have been developed.
The repeal of the State Aid Law due to public disfavor in 1905, however, represented a failure in the first attempt
to centralize highway construction and postponed the development of a highway department in Delaware until 1917.
In the meantime, however, the use of automobiles slowly started to increase. The first registration laws,
which required vehicle owners to supply their own tags, file a declaration of competence to operate the vehicle,
and pay a two dollar fee, were passed in 1905, and were soon followed by the issuing of operators' licenses for
the first time in 1907. Only 313 cars were registered in 1907; by 1917, this number had grown to 10,702.
It was in this year, 1917, that the Delaware Highway Department was formed. In response to the 1916 Federal Highway
Act, which provided financial assistance for highway construction only to those states with an organized highway department
in place, Delaware's General Assembly passed the Highway Act of 1917. This act formed a centralized highway
department with the authority to build and maintain a "permanent" highway system extending throughout
the state. The Act encouraged the building and preservation of new highways, rather than the maintenance of existing
dirt roads.
One of the major accomplishments of the young highway department was the completion of a boulevard stretching
from a point near Wilmington to the Maryland line. This boulevard, initiated by General T. Coleman duPont
in 1911, and now commonly known as Route 13, was completed entirely with private funding under the agreement that
it would later be turned over to the state. Though the cost of the project, at $3,917,004, was financed privately,
and the initial construction was completed by duPont's privately run corporation, the Highway Department took
charge of the boulevard's construction in 1917 and finished it in 1924.
Although the Highway Department was freed from the expense of its first major project, it nevertheless had some difficulty
in financing some of the state's other early roads. With the onset of the first fuel tax in 1923 (one cent
per gallon), the state began to gain the revenue necessary to efficiently initiate further highway construction.
Using this revenue, the Highway Department focused on consolidating, widening, and otherwise improving the state's
primary roads from 1926 until 1935, while simultaneously developing a secondary road system. With its foundation
in place, the Delaware Highway Department, now known as the Delaware Department of Transportation, began its now
85-year-old mission of designing, constructing, and maintaining safe transportation options for all of Delaware's residents
and visitors.
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