Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/7

 A GUIDE TO THE PREPARATION OF COUNTY ROAD HISTORIES

By

Nathaniel Mason Pawlett Faculty Research Historian

The importance of the preparation of a detailed history of the early roads of each county can hardly be overstated. Most of this early road network still remains in place and in service. With subsequent, sometimes extremely subtile, changes in emphasis, and with a few additions here and there, it has over the years provided the lines along which the Commonwealth's social, political and economic life has flowed. Indeed, the fate of the nation has at times been determined by this road network. Beyond this, road history and its supporting documents are becoming relevant to a growing number of disciplines from anthropology and architectural history through environmental science, folklore, genealogy, and history to sociology.

Local historians and genealogists, perhaps the most obvious groups to which these publications have relevance, have also a vested interest in seeing that more of these road histories are completed. Moreover, these are the people with the specialised knowledge of local history and genealogy So necessary to the writing of a road history. If in our time this massive picture puzzle whose pieces still lie before us in a heap is to be reassembled, an effort must soon be made. This present modest effort is the pioneering one, designed only to begin the task by attempting to sketch in broad outlines those roads laid down during the first 50 years after settlement in the area presently contained in each of Virginia's counties. That this must be done by local people, or those with a similar orientation and knowledge, should be obvious. That it must be done in this generation, before the rapidly quickening pace of urban and suburban development obliterates much of the visual evidence, is manifest. Local historians and genealogists are therefore summoned to a duty which has perhaps already been too long delayed in many areas.

The Virginia Highway and Transportation Research Council is a cooperative organisation sponsored jointly by the Virginia Department of Highways and Transportation and the University of Virginia and is located on the Grounds of the University at Charlottesville. The Council engages in a comprehensive program of research in the field of transportation. As a part of its program the Council, in December 1972, began research on the history of the road and bridge building technology in Virginia. The initial effort was concerned with truss bridges; a complementary effort concentrating on the early roads of Albemarle County got under way in October 1973.