Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/24

 After the novice road historian has done site surveys for several roads the logic of their routes will begin to become apparent to him, and the task will become progressively easier as he realises the constraints under which these early road builders acted and begins to appreciate their ingenious solutions to the problems presented to them by Virginia's geography. Although without modern technology, these men built roads the routes of which could be little improved by the later engineers responsible for the railroads and our present highway system. Of particular interest to the road historian is the scale of operations during the construction of some of these. Too often, a casual reading of a road order reveals only the names of several men and one fails to take into account the potential labour force available for road work when two or three planters of stature were assigned a road to clear or open. From the number of slaves known to be in the possession of many of these men at death, it would appear that the employment of 100 or more men at one time in constructing or opening a road would have been neither difficult nor unusual in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Besides the magnitude of the labour force employed, the amount of grading or levelling of hills is sometimes surprising in light of the notion prevalent today that such activities were extremely minimal in most of the early road building due to the lack of any sort of equipment beyond the pick and shovel of the individual labourer. What is perhaps forgotten is that often a lack of equipment can be overcome by a sufficiency of manpower properly applied, a fact still well known to people in a good part of the world. To actually traverse an eighteenth century road after a thorough study of the route on a topographical map is to convince oneself of the logic of the route and of the genius of those who laid out the road, whether animals, Indians, colonial Virginians, or all three. Time after time the budding road historian will see that the best, or the "least worst", route was chosen by these men. Occasionally an inconsistency will seem to appear, but, invariably, a closer examination will reveal that this or that strange curve was designed to circumvent a swamp that no longer exists or to head or ford a stream at some shallower point.

One of the best and most readily accessible examples of the logic of a chosen route to which the aspiring road historian can be referred for study is the Three Notch'd Road. With the aid of the published study and map, and perhaps a few topographical or geological survey maps, this road can easily be driven from Richmond to the Blue Ridge in a day's time and the terrain, route and the structures along it closely studied. Any doubts concerning the routing can be dispelled by the student himself attempting to construct an alternate route as short and with as good grade, stream and river crossings, drainage,

Besides the benefits derived by the student from repeating an extended site survey of the type represented by the Three Notch'd study, actually driving over a known eighteenth century road "up the country", the brief history of the early development of this road contained in the publication should provide an example similar to what will be encountered when the roads in other parts of Virginia are investigated. Combined with a guided tour of the road itself, this experience should enable the beginning road historian – 18 –