The Texas Department of Transportation marked the 70th anniversary of the interstate highway system Sept. 2 with a look back at the Texas engineer whose design became one of the system’s most recognizable symbols. According to the agency’s story by Ryan LaFontaine, the red, white and blue interstate shield can be traced to Richard Oliver, then a senior traffic engineer with the Texas Highway Department.
The account matters as a reminder that Texas’ transportation legacy rests on ideas as well as pavement. In 1956, TxDOT said, Oliver was tasked with developing the state’s entry in a national contest to design route signs for the new Interstate Highway System. His challenge was to create a sign that was practical to manufacture while conveying the significance of a federally designated network connecting communities and commerce across the country.
“I wanted to use red, white and blue,” Oliver said in a 1992 interview with Transportation News quoted in the story. “I presume that the Bureau of Public Roads—that’s what the FHWA was called back then—also felt that the shield should be red, white and blue.”
According to TxDOT, Oliver was not initially sure the design would pass muster with the federal Bureau of Public Roads, which oversaw standards for the emerging system. The Texas design was ultimately recommended by the American Association of State Highway Officials and went on to become the symbol used to identify interstate highways nationwide. In September 1957, Dewitt C. Greer, then head of the Texas Highway Department, wrote to congratulate Oliver, telling him the agency was proud that Texas had won the honor and commending his “ingenuity and skill in proposing this marker,” according to the story.
“When we drive on an interstate highway, we are traveling on one of the greatest civic investments in American history,” TxDOT Executive Director Marc Williams said in remarks commemorating the anniversary, as quoted in the story. “Our responsibility now is to protect and invest in that legacy, modernize it, and prepare it for future generations.”
TxDOT noted that Texas opened its first interstate segment along I-35 in downtown Austin in 1962, during Oliver’s time with the agency, when the state had fewer than 10 million residents and an economy built largely around oil, gas, agriculture, manufacturing and regional trade. Texas now has more than three times that population, the agency said, and its interstate system has grown into a backbone for moving people, goods and services.
The story observed that few TxDOT employees today know the history of the signs they install and maintain. Dallas transportation maintenance technician William Davis, on learning of Oliver’s creation, said in the story: “I had no idea. He’s from our TxDOT? That’s awesome.”