"Modern" Miracles

In less than 100 years.... heck, within the lifetime of my grandparents... "hard" roads and their kindred infrastructure have gone from the coolest "gee-whiz" invention, unimaginably compressing time and distance, to a societal blight (in some quarters).  I guess I mostly hang with team Gee-Whiz.  It almost seems incredulous today that we could commercialize the celebration of paving stuff.  But we did.  Imagine dropping a nickel, to share with the folks back home,
                                                                   road cuts:

tunnels and overpasses:

Why we even celebrated paved parking in the middle of the high wilderness!: