The construction and maintenance of earth roads

by Richard Roswell Lyman

Eight Rod Street

Fig. 6

Cross-drains should be provided at all “low places.” Culverts should be constructed under the roadway at these points to carry the water from the upper to the lower side of the road.

If storm water is carried quickly well away from a road, the condition of that road for traveling will be greatly improved. But rain and other storms do not generally put roads into their worst condition. This comes in the spring time, when the frost “comes out of the ground.” Observation shows, however, that not much frost gets into dry ground, so that if a road is properly maintained during the fall, and the fall and winter storm water is promptly drained well away from the road, frost can do the road very little damage. It cannot loosen up the earth, rendering it soft and mushy, as it does earth that is filled with moisture. To make good earth roads in the spring, therefore, requires good drainage and careful maintenance during the fall and winter.

The average country road in Utah can be constructed with its center raised six inches for from $40.00 to $50.00 per mile. To raise the crown of the road six inches more above the sides will cost about the same amount.

Maintenance.

Even more important than a proper construction of a road is the proper maintenance of that road. There is a difference, too, between maintenance and repair. The one keeps the road in good condition always, the other puts it in good condition occasionally. “What a minute and a shovelful of earth will do as maintenance may require loads of earth and hours of time as repairs.”

The road grader with its inclined blade, its four wheels, and its comparatively complex machinery, when used for maintaining or repairing an earth road merely cuts off the high places and deposits in the low places, the earth thus cut away.

Devices for Maintenance.

The leveler, a frame-work of planks held on edge and drawn in the direction of the length of the road with three or four of the timbers at right angles to this direction, renders good service by taking off the high places and filling up the low ones. The weight of this device and the greater width of its timbers, make it pack the earth into low places better than the road grader does. But since the blade of the grader can be set at such an angle with the direction of the road that it will constantly carry the earth from the outer edge toward the crown of the road, it makes the center of the road high, as it should, while the leveler makes it flat.