Road

an open highway for the passage of vehicles. The noun, road, is akin to the verb, ride, and indicates that the road is to be distinguished from the footpath. The early American colonists found no roads and needed none, for they brought no vehicles with them. Commodities were carried by boat; where water failed, men carried peltry and supplies in packs, or else transportation was managed by means of pack animals. Early trade followed the coast, the rivers, and Indian trails.

The earliest American roads were constructed in Virginia and led from interior plantations to the landings on the waterways. Hogsheads of tobacco were fitted with a pair of shafts for a horse, and were trundled along these roads to the barge landings. Supplies for the planters were hauled home in rude carts. As towns sprang up, roads were built. Road building in the Atlantic colonies was no easy affair. The country was wooded densely, and streams were frequent; currents swollen by rain and thaw were likely to carry away the rude log bridges. The western traveler took a horse and a pair of saddle bags rather than a coach in which to flounder in mire and pitch over stumps and roots. Many of the early thoroughfares were built by colonial appropriations. Toll houses and charges for the privilege of using the highway were not infrequent. The problem of building roads on the level prairies of the Mississippi Valley is a different affair.

So far as quality is concerned, America has not been famous for road building, but, in point of quantity, a plea may be entered. During the three centuries of white occupancy, over 2,151,000 miles of road have been constructed--enough to follow the equator around the globe eighty-six times and a lap over. About 40,000 miles are paved or are surfaced with stone, over 100,000 miles are surfaced with gravel, and about 10,000 miles have been surfaced with special materials. At present prices of real estate, the roadways are worth $342,000,000 as farming land. The present value of American roads, including right of way and cost of construction, is estimated by the United States Department of Agriculture at $1,720,339,000. Not less than 250,000,000 tons of freight are hauled from farms to the railway station each year. Figuring in the cost of men and teams and the wear of vehicles, the cost of hauling is not less than twenty-three cents per ton per mile. When we reflect that the railways, with their costly roads, expensive equipment, and large quantities of freight, make money by hauling fourth class freight for long distances at an average rate of one cent per ton per mile, it is evident that the farmer's twenty-three cents is excessive. The farmer's haul is, on an average, nine miles. The average cost of hauling farm produce to market is $2.09 per ton. The railroads carry 1,145,000,000 tons of freight a year, all of it from one station to another and much of it from ocean to ocean, for an average of $1.57 per ton--less than it costs the farmer to get his produce to town if he counts his time worth anything. With better roads larger loads could be hauled and light loads could be taken in less time. With better roads it ought not to be difficult to cut the expense of marketing in two.

One of the first steps toward better roads is the organization of districts large enough or at least long enough to include an entire road. Local road building is a failure. This was demonstrated in England at an early day. The enormous freight traffic carried on by the carters between York and London kept the roads in a mire that the local parishes could not mend. It was necessary for the government to take hold of the matter. Likewise, in this country, it is not only impracticable, but unfair, to expect local communities to keep main thoroughfares in order.

A second step that should be taken is the payment of road taxes in money instead of labor. It is all well enough for the first settlers, men without money, to get together for a day or two to build roads; but such a system is primitive and does not result in good roads. Money, too, expended judiciously under competent supervision, will do in ten years more to provide creditable roads than a century of the system of "working out" a road tax under which one-half of those called have no heart in the work and the other half are impatient to be at home plowing corn.

More time and money should be spent in preventing roads from getting into bad condition. An ounce of gravel by way of prevention is better than a pound of cure thrown into a later mud hole. It is not enough to build roads. They must be watched. A man, a cart, a horse, and a gravel pit kept busy all summer are worth five times as much toward maintaining good roads as the same amount of expenditure crowded into a hurried week between corn planting and corn plowing.

Methods of road building must differ in different localities. In all soils it is necessary to take the water away from the road by drainage, or take the road away from the water by elevating the roadbed. It is useless to build a road without first providing for a dry roadbed. Standing water and traffic will reduce any soil to a quagmire. The first step toward building a permanent road is a system of permanent drainage. Tile drainage is apt to prove most satisfactory. Ordinarily a tile laid along under one gutter with an occasional twenty-foot cross spur will be sufficient. Drainage of this sort is not expensive nor is it hard to lay. The chief difficulty lies in securing a proper outlet.

Next to drainage comes grading. Most roads are too wide. The narrower the roadway, the needs of traffic and the passing of teams provided for, the easier it is to keep a road from soaking full of water. The surface should be rounded slightly to shed water. Ruts should be filled as fast as they form. Here is where a caretaker on the road for the season gets in his best work. Instead of allowing water to stand in ruts and soften the road bed, he prevents ruts from forming and keeps his road dry; for a well built, well hardened road turns water like the roof of a barn.

Surfacing is a problem of its own. Clay and gravel pack together well and form an excellent surface. Clay roads shaped up and well treated with gravel harden satisfactorily. Wide-tired wagons pack surfacing excellently. If the crust of clay and gravel be mixed well and be of sufficient thickness, such a road will bear heavy traffic. Sand roads are improved by surfacing with clay. Clay and sand do not form as firm a road as clay and gravel, but the combination is excellent. If gravel cannot be had a sand surface may be relied upon to improve a clay road. There are extensive stretches of country, as in the Red River Valley, the plains of Illinois, and the delta of the Mississippi, where deep, rich loam is the only road material in sight. It takes water like a sponge, and churns beneath the wheels of traffic into mud out of which an animal can hardly lift its feet. An empty wagon mired and temporarily abandoned in the middle of such a road is not an infrequent sight. Something has been done for these roads by puddling them. If soil of the sort named be worked until the grains of which it is composed are brought into close contact, it will solidify, harden, and bake. Farmers understand that it is not well to plow certain fields when wet, or the soil will be puddled and will harden and bake. Now the very puddling that the farmer avoids, the roadmaker desires. An implement known as the split-log drag is used. It is so called because it was made originally of the halves of a split log held on edge by rounds inserted like the rounds of a ladder. By hitching a team to one side of this split-log ladder or drag and hauling it up and down the road, the surface soil is smeared--puddled--until it grows dense, tough, and hard. By shaping the roadbed well, and keeping up the drag treatment, a puddled surface may be formed on many soils thick enough and tough enough to bear up the weight of loaded teams as ice sustains them in winter. By allowing one end of the drag to lag behind, an arrangement effected readily by lengthening one chain, the drag fills ruts, works material toward the center of the roadway and preserves the rounded-up shape properly.

In the absence of sand and gravel, burnt clay has been tried for surfacing. It is said to be a fairly satisfactory substitute for macadam material. Experiments with burnt clay have been instituted in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The advent of the automobile was hailed with pleasure by the advocates of good roads. It was felt that the interest of a large number of enthusiastic, intelligent, and oftentimes wealthy travelers might result, as it has resulted, in an agitation and helpful legislation in the interest of good roads. An unexpected difficulty has arisen, however. It is found that the soft, broad rubber tire speeding along the road sucks up the dust, draws the finer materials up out of the roadbed, and disintegrates and destroys even old roads of unsurpassed quality. A magazine writer claims that the roads of France, on which enormous sums have been expended in the hope that they might be permanent, have been injured by automobile traffic to the extent of $220,000,000 in twelve years. Spraying with crude oil has been suggested to prevent the fine particles from lifting, but it is yet too soon to speak of success.

It is difficult to say whether the sea coast or the prairie offers the most perfect natural roadway. Certain stretches on the coast of Florida, California, New Jersey, and elsewhere are as perfect as the surface of a lake that has frozen over when no wind ruffled it. Sea and shell and sand combine to make a perfect roadway for the bicycle, the automobile, the tally-ho, the turnout, and the roadster. An old prairie road that has been worn into the turf but not through it is the most natural and grateful road in existence for the foot of man or horse. It is a pity to convert the poetry of such a trail into a prosy earthen turnpike, but the turf road is unfit for heavy loads and has to go. See Macadam; Wagon; Cumberland Road; Appian Way