Rebuilding and Renewing America – America's Past

Gallatin Plan

In 1808 President Thomas Jefferson requested Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin to create a national plan of ports, roads, and waterways to encourage national growth and trade among the nations farmers. Many states moved quickly to implement aspects of Gallatin’s plan like the Erie Canal in New York revitalizing trade and growth in the region and nation.

Years later under the guidance of President Abraham Lincoln congress built on elements of the Gallatin Plan by passing the Pacific Railway Act; realizing the first transcontinental railway. The same year congress worked off principles of Gallatin’s plan and passed the Morrill Land Grant College Act, creating a nationwide system of state universities, like Oregon State.

Blumenauer introduced and overwhelmingly passed H.R. 936, a resolution to commemorate the 1808 Gallatin Plan on March 11, 2008.

Roosevelt Plan

One hundred years after Gallatin envisioned his plan for our nation’s roads, waterways, and ports President Theodore Roosevelt began to move on his own vision for America’s growing infrastructure. In 1908 Roosevelt brought together a Conference of Governors at the White House to implement a series of conservation plans throughout the nation. These plans were drafted by the Inland Waterways Commission to help bring economic growth to lower performing regions, like the west and south, through irrigation, river restoration, and dam projects.

Roosevelt’s programs sought to respond to the nations past railroad development that had consolidated power and wealth to a few hands in the Northeast and Midwest and bring the nation’s prosperity to all regions and citizens. Roosevelt’s conservation programs worked to restore destroyed farmland and clogged river corridors and build a system of cheap and accessible electric power.

On the same day as the Gallatin Resolution Earl also introduced and passed H.R. 935 a resolution celebrating Roosevelt's 1908 Plan.