Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/196

* EOAD. 176 ROAD. a system of improved road construction in many respects similar to that now widely used throughout the world. First of all, Tresaguet jiropared a curved bed, or earth foundation, for his stonework, parallel with and about 10 inches below the finished surface of the proposed road- way. Instead of laying his large stones tlat he set them on edge, broke their upper edges oft' to an even surface, then covered this stone founda- tion with another hand-laid course of stone, smaller than the first, and with its edges also hammered ofl'. Finally, he put on a third layer of stones, broken to about the size of an English walnut, and spread by a shovel. The hardest stone was chosen for the surface layer. This general system was continued in France until 1820. In that year the plan worked out by Mac- adam in England was introduced in France, and in 1830 it was officially adopted in the latter country. It involved comparatively little change except in the foundation, as will be seen from the description of Macadam's work, further on. Macadam and Telford (qq.v.) .whose names have been applied to the two rival systems of broken- Omvel and Chalk Macadam, early 19^Cen+ury. ~vi^^J^2Z£a_ '"^ K 3- -H Massachusetts S+andard Macadam., THE DEVELOPMENT OF BROKEN STONE ROADWAYS. stone road construction now practiced for nearly a century, were both Scotchmen, born within a year of each other (1756 and 17.57, respectively). Although both of these great engineers built hun- dreds of miles of broken-stone road construction on modifications of the French plans already de- scribed, Macadam departed further from his mod- els. Telford retained the single course of large stoue on edge, introduced in France by Tresa- guet, but he placed them on the bed of a level trench, and secured a curved surface to his road- way by using larger, or taller, stones at the cen- tre than at the sides. Over these large stones, in some cases, he spread a layer of gravel 1 inch deep; then he finished the roadway with about 6 inches of broken stone. Macadam used noth- ing but broken stone from the finished surface of the earth foundation, at the same time raising the stone bed above the earth at each side, instead of sinking it in a trench. The latter change was designed to facilitate drainage. Macadam's en- tire system was founded on perfect drainage and on the thorough compacting of the angular frag- ments of broken stone into one solid mass. See Road and Street Machinery. Prior to 1800 there were few roads in the United States that deserved to be characterized as improved. In 179G Francis Baily, in his Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North Anterica, wrote that '"there is at present but one turnpike road on the continent, which is be- tween Lancaster and Philadelpliia, a distance of sixty-six miles, and is a masterpiece of its kind; it is paved with stone the whole way, and over- laid with gravel, so that it is nev'er obstructed during the most severe season." The road was built by a company, chartered in 1792. At the start it consisted of boulders rolled in belter skelter and filled between and above with earth and gravel. Hea^'y rains reduced the road to a dangerous condition. It is said that the road was afterwards macadamized. This was onl,y one of many toll roads, distributed over the United States, but it is doulitful Avhether any of the other early ones could lay claim to having been macadamized. Another toll road, built in whole or in part before 1800, extended from the Shenan- doah Valley, in Virginia, westward to Kentucky. It was built, and as late as 1895 it was said still to be owned by the Wilderness Turnpike Company. Although many attempts were made to secure road construction by the National Government in the early days of the Constitution, the onl.y such work of importance, if not the sole example, was the Xational Road (see Cumberland Road) from Cumberland, Md., westerly 800 miles to Vandalia. 111. The original plan was to build a road from the Atlantic coast to the Ohio River. The road had .a total width of 80 feet, and was macadamized to a width of 30 feet. As settle- ment proceeded, corduroi/, or log-surfaced roads, were built across dangerously wet and soft stretches, and with the advent of the saw mill, plank roads, particularly for the toll ways, be- came common in some sections. When new, or when kept in good rcjiair. jilank roads were a vast improvement, but they were expensive to maintain and liable to get badly out of order. After the wave of internal improvements had swept over the various States of the Union, or from, say, 1835-40, cni, road construction gener- ally became a purely local matter, except where turnpike companies built long stretches of toll roads. The advent of railways rapidly lessened the demand for extensive single lines of high- ways. "Working out the road tax." instead of paying the tax in money and having the money laid out by experienced road-builders, was the rule, and poor roads were the result. The rapid