Long before automobiles became common in Colorado, people demanded better roads as bicyclists in the late 1880s took to “velocipedes” or “Wheels” and struggled with rutted, unmarked roads full of potholes, launching the Good Roads movement to press elected officials for improvements. After the first car arrived in Colorado in the 1890s and automobile ownership spread, the need for durable roads grew more urgent. In 1910 the Colorado Highway Commission began creating a coordinated statewide road network, and in 1912 the governor declared the second Friday of May “Good Roads Day” to teach children that good roads strengthened communities and states. In the early 1910s residents of Douglas County looked forward to a new primary road, largely funded by the state, as engineers in the State Highway Department designed the “Great North-South Highway” to link Front Range cities from Wyoming to New Mexico along a centuries-old transportation corridor in this vicinity, now U.S. Highway 85. As State Highway No. 1, it became Colorado’s most important route until Interstate 25 was built in the late 1950s, with many east-west roads connecting to it and the stretch between Denver and Colorado Springs through Castle Rock carrying the state’s heaviest daily traffic. The road was repeatedly improved, and in 1928 the State Highway Department said the seventy-three-mile section between Denver and Colorado Springs was the fourth longest uninterrupted cement pavement in the world.