An essential step in making large scenic reservations accessible to the motoring public without unduly marring landscape scenery or natural systems was the initiation of "landscape engineering." When it was begun, Going-to-the-Sun Road was the most ambitious road construction project ever undertaken by the Bureau of Public Roads and the NPS. The extreme terrain and conditions, as well as the newness of the administrative agreement between the two federal bureaus, made the road a laboratory of innovative road engineering practices and policies. While building the road, the NPS and the Bureau of Public Roads developed the construction standards and the cooperative administration that characterized future road construction not only in national parks, but on other federal lands and, after 1933, in state parks as well.

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Information courtesy of the National Park Service.