 After the motor vehicle gained increasing prominence in the 1920s, political and popular pressure grew to create a system of New Zealand state highways.The newly formed Fulton Hogan would be one of the companies growing from and building this system in the following decades, at first mainly in the South Island.It was created by Julius Fulton, an assistant surveyor, and Robert Hogan, a mechanic, who had both been employees of the Neuchatel Asphalte Company in near East Taieri in the late 1920s.