Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/28



After one has surveyed and mastered the various techniques of the road historian and the collection of information is well under way, the question ultimately must be asked: What will constitute a satisfactory road history for the particular area under consideration? Although the answer will to some extent depend upon the area in question, its history and state of development, and its surviving records, it would be well to here attempt some sort of a very general definition of what would constitute an acceptable road history.

Given that the art is presently in its infancy, it would first seem wise to then place some limits on the coverage any road history of a county would attempt at this time. A multitude of reasons could be adduced for this, but the two principal ones should suffice.

First, the Albemarle experience, if taken as typical, would indicate that most of the principal road network of a county has usually been laid down within twenty-five years of the initial settlement of the area, and will have survived intact, though not without some modification here and there over time, to the present. Beyond this, certain landmark events such as the American Revolution and the era of the turnpikes, canals and railroads will have their effects and will have to be taken into consideration, but it is doubtful if this rule will be greatly modified by future experience in the field. Where possible, the study should also encompass these events and their effect upon the roads of the county, but not at the expense of stretching the study to cover too long a period. The formative years are really of the greatest importance. After these have been thoroughly examined, studied and mastered, the subsequent years can be studied by others. Turnpikes, canals and railroads can themselves each be made the subject of separate studies which may relate in whole or in part to the study of the early roads.

Second, also taking into consideration the Albemarle experience, is the relative difficulty in coping with the mass of repetitive road orders should a period of, say, a hundred years or more be studied at first. With the subdivision of roads and the resulting proliferation of surveyors the task becomes well-nigh impossible, at the least much too time-consuming for its productiveness of new information, and coverage of this period might best be deferred to a later time, and perhaps also to different techniques.

From the foregoing it would then seem that beyond a certain point the real return on the time spent in research would decrease. Therefore, it is suggested that the period to be covered by the first road history of a county be limited to no more than, say, fifty years from the threshold of settlement of the area in question. Notice that the time span here is taken from the period of first settlement rather than from the date of formation of the county.

It might even be possible to gain an adequate picture of the early roads of a county by covering a smaller period. It is probably better, however, to err in the direction of covering too great a time span rather than too small – 22 –