The OregonDepartment of Transportation is a department of the state government of the U.S. state of Oregon responsible for systems of transportation. It was first established in 1969. It had been preceded by the Oregon State Highway Department which, along with the Oregon State Highway Commission, was created by an act of the Oregon Legislative Assembly in 1913. It works closely with the five-member Oregon Transportation Commission in managing the state's transportation systems. The Oregon Transportation Commission, formerly the Oregon State Highway Commission, is a five-member governor-appointed government agency that manages the state highways and other transportation in the U.S. state of Oregon, in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Inception
The first State Highway Commission was created on August 12, 1913, and was composed of GovernorOswald West, Secretary of State Ben W. Olcott and Treasurer Thomas B. Kay. On January 12, 1915, James Withycombe became Governor and replaced Oswald West on the commission. The 1917 Oregon Legislative Assembly redesigned the State Highway Commission, with citizens appointed to replace the elected officials. The new commissioners held their first meeting on March 6, and the commission was then known as the Oregon Highway Division. As Oregon's transportation needs started to grow, the division expanded and, in 1919, it employed their first State Bridge Engineer, Conde McCullough.
Events
By 1920, Oregon had of paved roads and of plank roads for a population of 783,389 and, by 1932, the work that had been started on the Oregon Coast Highway in 1914 was completed, except for five bridges, which meant greater responsibility for the division. This work was complete when the construction of the bridges over the Yaquina, Alsea, Siuslaw, and Umpqua rivers and Coos Bay were completed, closing the last gaps in the highway. By 1940, the highway division was managing more than of state, market and country roads in Oregon, with nearly being hard-surfaced. In 2018, the city government of Portland, Oregon and ODOT entered into an intergovernmental agreement in which the Portland city government takes over the cleanups of transient camps on ODOT right-of-way in select locations in Portland in exchange for payments from ODOT. In 2019, ODOT installed boulders at five locations in Portland to deter transient camps around the freeways. The installations have received support from neighbors while criticized by homeless advocacy groups.
On November 12, 1970, the department was tasked with disposing a dead sperm whale that washed ashore Florence beach. The department exploded the dead whale using half a ton of dynamite to blast it off the beach. Pieces of dead whale went everywhere including the beach, bystanders, a parking lot and a park, severely damaging at least one car. Willamette Week reports "The decision to publicly dynamite an enormous mammal has become one of Oregon's all-time most bizarre moments." This became known as the "exploding whale incident".
