This manuscript collection was donated to the Idaho State Archives in 1968 from the United States Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) in Boise, Idaho. It contains records related to Federal Aid Highway Projects in Idaho including reports, maps, schematics, histories, and photographs dating between 1915 and 1961. The photographs in this collection document Idaho's earliest road construction projects, featuring the historical transition from manual labor to steam engines and then gasoline powered equipment. Many images are of Idaho's natural geography, used by surveyors, before undertaking construction projects. It also highlights many of Idaho's natural disasters over time including floods, blizzards, slides, and washouts. In 1969 the BPR was decommissioned in favor of a newly organized Idaho Department of Highways (1970), which later became the Idaho Department of Transportation and then finally, the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD). Materials donated as part of this collection pre-date this institutional transition.
