Yellow brick road
The actual road is believed to be one in Peekskill, New York, where L. Frank Baum attended Peekskill Military Academy. According to a local legend, the Yellow Brick Road was derived from a road paved with yellow bricks near Holland, Michigan, where Baum spent summers. Ithaca, New York, also makes a claim for being Frank Baum's inspiration. He opened a road tour of his musical, The Maid of Arran, in Ithaca, and he met his future wife Maud Gage Baum while she was attending Cornell University. At the time, yellow bricks paved local roads. Yellow brick roads can also be found in Aberdeen, South Dakota; Albany, New York; Rossville (Baltimore County), Maryland; Montclair, New Jersey (Parkhurst Place and Afterglow Way); Bronxville, New York (on Prescott and Valley roads); Chicago, Illinois; Liberal, Kansas; Sedan, Kansas and Chittenango, New York, as well as a school in Abington, Pennsylvania, and abroad in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Kansas Turnpike
As the turnpike did not use any state tax revenue for maintenance, the pavement began to deteriorate rapidly, and crews faced difficulty keeping up with the snow in winter conditions in a winter storm during 1960. In the early 1960s, many senior positions in the Kansas Turnpike Authority were cut, and thanks to this and other austerity measures such as targeting maintenance to save costs in the future, the turnpike slowly became profitable. By 1966, it was clear that the turnpike had not been built to the higher standards of the Interstate Highway system; the roadway had developed ruts and other issues due to deferred maintenance. To temporarily fix the problem, a layer of asphalt oil and a layer of sand and asphalt was used to fill in the ruts, and graded rock coated with asphalt was used to seal the road. Since the road had been originally constructed at the same time, and not built in segments over a period of time, similar maintenance issues appeared along the whole length of the road at the same time. Bridges and pavement were repaired on a rotating basis, to stagger the cost of needed repairs. The bridge over the Kansas River was widened and replaced after 1973. As economic conditions improved for the Authority, equipment was slowly replaced, and workers were given pay increases, both of which were badly needed.