By Richard R. Lyman
Prof. of Civil Engineering, University of Utah,
and Vice-Chairman State Road Commission
Great institutions, great movements, and great advances in science grow, they do not spring into existence instantly. So it will be with the installation of good roads—the system must grow. No legislation can be enacted that will bring into existence suddenly a fine system of well made and well maintained highways. The beginning must be at the bottom where even the best legislation can give no more than a good beginning and then, by the vigorous application of work and wisdom, a system of roads may be constructed that will be not only the pride of the citizens of the state, but a source of education, prosperity, and pleasure. Education, because good roads will make it easy for boys and girls to get to the grade schools, and young men and young women to the high schools at all seasons of the year; prosperity, because farm products can be put in the market when the price is highest, and teams can be used profitably at other work when they cannot be used on the farm; pleasure, because of the comfort with which, at all times, those in the country can travel, thus making it possible to have and enjoy the many social advantages offered in the club, the church, and the neighbor’s home.
When, by enacting into law the best road legislation it can, the legislature has made a beginning, it is then the duty of the people to begin to learn more concerning roads and their maintenance. It may be well, in the imagination, to picture hard roads leading everywhere, but, advocating their construction at once and working ever so vigorously to this end, will probably delay rather than advance this work, for the reason that the cost of their maintenance is such that, if these roads were already constructed, it would be impossible in this state at present to keep them in good condition. It will take years of education to teach the people to place that value upon good roads that will induce them to spend, both in the construction and maintenance of highways, even a small fraction of the sum it would require to keep in repair an extensive system of hard roads in Utah. Farmers see at once when their actual cost is presented, that to make such outlays is, for them, utterly and absolutely impossible.
First in the natural development of a system of highways comes the earth road, and since a good road of this character is the very best foundation for all kinds of better highways, it may be considered, not only as a road complete in and of itself, but also as an important part of every good road. When the people throughout the state have been so taught and trained in road construction that they can and do actually construct and maintain earth roads in good condition, the foundation will then be laid for some, or in fact for any better road, and the time will have arrived in which the construction of roads with hard surfaces of some sort can be taken up appropriately and perhaps effectively.
The discussion on roads, road construction, and road maintenance of the past few years has pretty well demonstrated that people generally are of the opinion that the roads should be improved and that with the general improvement of the roads will come a corresponding improvement in the prosperity and general uplifting of the people in the country districts; yet, while the opinion is general that roads should be improved, there is a vast difference of opinion as to what is the best method to follow to reach the desired end.
Hard Roads.
Men with money and automobiles are vigorously urging that road-building materials everywhere be tested, that road graders, stone crushers, and other expensive road-building machinery be purchased, and that the preparation for commencing road construction be begun at once. In short, they are conducting a vigorous campaign in the interest of hard roads—and in so doing, they may defeat their own cause now as they have done in the past. “When the hard road enthusiast began to tell the farmer how much it cost him to haul his produce to market,” says Professor Baker, “and how much he could save by the construction of hard roads, he knew instinctively that the conclusions were ridiculous, and the continual harping upon these false statistics and absurd estimates led him to believe that an attempt was being made to force hard roads upon him, whether or no, and his attitude changed from one of indifference to one of open hostility to all road improvement.”[1]
What, then, should be the line of procedure? “Unless a community is willing and able to maintain the earth roads in a reasonably good condition,” says Professor Baker again, “it is useless to expect that it will be willing or able to support a high class wagon road; and therefore, the dissemination of correct information concerning the construction and care of earth roads is politically, economically, and physically the first step towards a better form of construction.”[2]
An earth road to be a good road must be “dry, smooth, and hard.” These three conditions could be maintained with comparative ease if the earth road could be protected from water, which is its greatest destroyer and one of the most important factors in the destruction or deterioration of all roads.