Roads

We take many aspects of life for granted in the 21 st century, aspects that were not at all a guarantee in the 1920s. For instance, the 1920s saw many streets in Libertyville paved for the first time, and parking lines were drawn on Milwaukee Avenue downtown. On the other hand, some things never change. Motorists complain about the condition of the roads now, and they certainly did in the 1920s. Automobile accidents were perhaps even more prevalent then than now. And communities continue to bicker over minutiae.

To give you an idea of the condition of our roads as seen from the outside, we submit the following letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, August 29, 1920:

“Ode to Lake County

Sir: Allow me to nominate that unspeakable ten miles of drainage ditch they call a road north of Wheeling as Great Grandaddy of all the poor highway species. It is not fair to think of it in the same breath with honest, twentieth century transportation lines. It is the pariar [sic] of the highway family, the leper among even those other road crimes in Lake county.

Let the motorist who leaves Cook county concrete and ventures north through Half Day and Libertyville bid farewell to all he holds dear under his hood. Ten miles an hour over those awful chuck holes is breakneck speed. Faster is suicide. As far as I could learn, neither county nor township has worked the worst part of this disgrace this season. Holes are continuous through Antioch on the way to Lake Geneva.

The startling part of the Illinois disgrace comes when one reaches the Wisconsin line. It is a real, not an imaginary, line. On the Illinois side lie the chuckholes, broken springs, and buried hopes of a thousand sufferers. On the Wisconsin side, one foot ahead, lies perfect graded highway, smooth, well kept, delightful. One patrolman working now and then with one team and road drag molds the miracle. The road surface is the same. Weather conditions are identical: But the man from Mars himself could not but realize in riding south that he had crossed from a roads paradise to—Illinois!....
-- E. B.”

Well, it took a few years, but most of the major roads in Lake County and Libertyville were paved by the end of the decade. In town, secondary residential streets also were paved. But once the roads were paved, other problems arose….

The July 7, 1927 Chicago Tribune ran an article detailing the Cook County Board meeting which discussed the widening of Milwaukee Avenue in the county. The discussion turned to the problem of traffic jams in Libertyville due to traffic lights in downtown. Board President A. J. Cermak was quoted as saying “On July 4 the automobile traffic was blocked on the Wisconsin highway [Milwaukee Avenue] through Libertyville by these lights until traffic jammed half way to the state line....It is impossible to estimate the amount of gasoline wasted in running engines while traffic was halted three times at stop lights going through the village, despite the fact that no cross traffic was in sight.”

The gauntlet had been thrown. In the July 12 issue of the Chicago Tribune, Libertyville Village President Earl Corlett wrote, “I did not suppose any one’s time was worth so much on a Sunday that they could not be generous enough to be delayed thirty seconds to give other people their rights….We welcome the motorist from Chicago but think we should have a few privileges as taxpayers as citizens and taxpayers.”

Cermak replied in the July 19 letter to the editor section: “My conclusion is Mr. Corlett must have a plaything, why does he not install a set of stop and go lights in his back yard, instead of on a heavily traveled highway?....When there are so many automobiles traveling on Saturday and Sunday as holidays, one stop light should be enough in Libertyville.”

Mr. Corlett took his turn: “If Mr. Cermak would spend as much time worrying about the stop lights in Cook county as he does in Libertyville no doubt they would have better results there….So far Libertyville has been able to handle its own traffic problem without outside interference and I think it will still continue to do so.” Mr. Cermak refused to let go of the issue, as you can read in the Libertyville Independent article from 1929; however, his will did not prevail in our town as is evidenced by the stoplights that still allow pedestrians to cross Milwaukee Avenue to this day.

Milwaukee Avenue before it was paved.