Dirt road

“ Dirty water and watery dirt make bad going, and mud is the greatest obstacle to the travel and traffic of the farmer. Mud is a mixture of dirt and water. The dirt is always to be found in the roadway, and the water, which comes in rain, snow, and frost, softens it; horses and wagons and narrow wheel tires knead it and mix it, and it soon gets into so bad a condition that a fairly loaded wagon cannot be hauled through it. ”

“ Very few people know how great an amount of water falls upon the country road, and it may surprise some of us to be told that on each mile of an ordinary country highway three rods wide within the United States there falls each year an average of twenty-seven thousand tons of water. In the ordinary country dirt road the water seems to stick and stay as if there was no other place for it, and this is only because we have never given it a fair opportunity to run out of the dirt and find its level in other places. ”

“ Every time the road was swept or scraped, the sand would go with the rest, and then we should be ‘as we were,’ until more was put down. A better measure would be to keep the roadway clean by the use of revolving brushes worked on the end of a cart, into which the dirt should be carried by the brushes. ”

“ Once built, the expense of keeping them in good order is less than that of keeping a dirt road in bad order.
Most of the country highways of the United States are dirt roads that are deep with dust in dry weather and almost impassable at the breaking of winter. ”

“ But it was even worse in the bystreets, where an attempt at sweeping had been made, where the mud lay in a thick slimy, shiny tide between the narrow ridges of footpath, where the tall houses, so close together that they completely filtered the air and light and retained nothing but the darkness and the dirt, were splashed with mud to their first-floor windows, and whose inhabitants or visitors desirous of crossing the road had to proceed to the junction with the main street, and, after tacking across in comparative cleanliness, commence their descent on the opposite side. ”

“ We cannot make a hard road out of soft mud, and no amount of labor and machinery will make a good dirt road that will stay good unless some plan is adopted to get rid of the surplus water. Water is a heavy, limpid fluid, hard to confine and easy to let loose. It is always seeking for a chance to run down a hill ”

“ This word means filth or anything that renders foul and unclean, and means nothing else. It is often improperly used for earth or loam, and sometimes even for sand or gravel. We not unfrequently hear of a dirt road when an unpaved road is meant. ”

“ The way to do is to look over a road after a rain, when the depressions and basins will show themselves. Whenever one is large enough to receive a shovelful of broken stone, scrape out the soft dirt and let it form a ring around the depression. Fill with broken stone to about an inch or two above the surface of the road. The ring of dirt around will keep the stone above the surface in place, and the passing wheels will work it on the broken stone and also act as a binder. The whole will work down and become compact and even with the road surface. The ruts are treated in the same way. ”

“ In too many of the newly built roads, though the engineering selection may be good, the execution is bad. Roads are made of clay and dirt only. They run over artificial embankments sup ported by mud foundations, there is no sufficient provision made for carrying off water, and the gradient of the hillside along which the road itself is carried is left much too steep. ”

“ The Office of Public Roads’ dust prevention and experimental roads programs were the training grounds for the small group of highway engineers and physical scientists who later laid the foundations of soil engineering and pavement design.
Dragging the Dirt Roads
Dirt roads will not stand up under traffic unless they are shaped and kept free of ruts so that water will shed quickly and not soak in and soften the roadbed. ”

“ As we near London Bridge, the dirt of the vast highway gains upon us; but, it must be confessed, its general picturesqueness is thereby immeasurably increased. Dirt, after all, is always so near akin to picturesqueness. The mud-banks and the mud become more constant, the bustle and hum of the great city are everywhere evident. Barges are moored under the tall warehouses; workmen stand in the storing-places above, hauling up the goods from the boats with ropes and pulleys; it is a scene of ceaseless activity, an activity too, which increases as you descend the stream. ”

“ The Chicago Commission in its investigation declares that the quantity and volume of dirt attributed to horse drawn vehicle traffic is the most important source of street dirt. The loss of sand and coal and crushed stone, hay, manure and other loose material from poorly constructed vehicles or overloaded vehicles adds greatly to the quantity of street dirt to be removed. ”

“ But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road—there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt. ”

“ DUST OF THE DESERT
PROLOGUE Roads of men thread the world. They thunder with a life flood. They are vibrant with a pulse of affairs. By land and water and air they link to-day to to-morrow. But El Camino de los Muertos (the Road of the Dead Men) is a dim highway leading nowhere but back and back to forgotten yesterdays. ”

“ The dirt that covers the streets as they are now paved does not come entirely from above or from any external source, but is forced upward from beneath the pavements by the impact of the trucks, carts, carriages, and horses' hoofs, in the ordinary traffic of the city. ”

“ From Wrecklesham to Winchester we have come over roads and lanes of flint and chalk. The weather being dry again, the ground under you, as solid as iron, makes a great rattling with the horses’ feet. The country where the soil is stiff loam upon chalk is never bad for corn. Not rich, but never poor. There is at no time anything deserving to be called dirt in the roads. The buildings last a long time, from the absence of fogs and also the absence of humidity in the ground. The absence of dirt makes the people habitually cleanly ”

“ Dirt was everywhere, strewing the narrow streets, and incrusting the tall shabbiness of the edifices, from the foundations to the roofs; it lay upon the thresholds, and looked out of the windows, and assumed the guise of human life in the children that Seemed to be engendered out of it. ”

“ By the wide hearth of stone or brick, one could whittle with impunity. Dirt is not common dirt in front of an open fire. Charles Lamb's clean hearth or that of the too fastidious modern house robs it of half its comfort and attractiveness. A little matter out of place, somebody's definition of dirt, is one of the most hospitable and cordial things I ever meet in the houses of my friends. ”

“ If there were only the dirt which comes from the use of the streets, the paid cleaners could easily remove it. [Pg 163] Most of the dirt, however, comes because people do not think or care. One little piece of paper, a banana peel, an apple core—how trifling they seem! Yet, suppose each boy and girl of thousands of boys and girls should forget, and should throw something into the street, how littered the streets would be! ”

“ But we should no doubt get used to these things if we were forced to dwell long in any city. I am, however, certain that I should always loathe the dirt of cities. The dirt of the country, good red mud, or the slime of wet stems of trees, does not trouble me, even if I am covered with it. ”

“ It will also be noticed that, soon after a street has been cleaned, it is again defiled by the refuse and garbage from the neighboring buildings, and that the carts which transport street dirt, ashes, and garbage, sand for new buildings, earth from cellar excavations, and the dust and dirt from buildings torn down, scatter some part of their contents into the street as they proceed to their destination. ”

“ It literally carved its way down to the valley. Slopes often greater than forty-five degrees have been cut into intrepidly; arches and viaducts thrown over gaping clefts, bridges over unbridgeable chasms. The road turns on itself; it doubles and twists and dodges; it crawls midway along the ledges, gouges a path into the hill around a landslide's groove, looks over uncomfortable brinks with easy unconcern, and in short outplays Nature at every point. And all the while it continues wide and firm, and we trot ceaselessly downward with not one pause. ”

“ Would the dust be increased or diminished by this alteration?—I consider, that upon a well made stone road, with the same care of cleansing and watering that is given to the streets, that the annoyance from dust would be infinitely less; and a road is more susceptible of retaining the water than pavement. ”

“ While the perversion of nice and nasty is British, there is an American perversion of dirt not unlike it. To most Americans, I think, dirt suggests earth or soil or clay or dust; to most Americans, I think, dirt no longer carries with it any suggestion of dirtiness. I have heard a mother send her little boy off to make mud-pies on condition that he used only “clean dirt”; and I know that a lawn-tennis ground of compacted earth is called a dirt court. Yet, tho the noun has thus been defecated, the adjective keeps its earlier force ”

“ Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple; ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them. ”

“ Every now and then with a whisper and whistle rising into a great buffeting flap, a sudden whirlwind of dust would scour some twenty yards along the road, and then break like a shore-quenched wave against one or other of the mud walls or throw itself heavily against a house and fall in a shower of sand. ”

“ The roadways that lead from Pool into Camborne are bordered on either side with immense heaps of crushed rock and dirt, the roads themselves grimy with coal-dust, where they are not stodgy with the overflowed red mud from the mine-adits. ”

“ The dirt that gathers in the streets is of many sorts. A great deal is made by the horses and carabaos, mules and oxen, that draw loads about the city. The wheels of the vehicles, too, grind the stone pavement to dust, and this is blown about by the wind. Dead leaves drop from the trees, choke up the gutters, and, left to themselves, will make sodden masses of decayed vegetation in corners. Waste paper blows about, and 87all sorts of unclean things are thrown into the streets by careless people. It takes a small army of laborers to keep the streets in order. ”

“ When I am taking a walk through the fields and get one of my feet deeper than usual into the mud, I always endeavour to bear it as well as I may before the eyes of those who meet me rather than make futile efforts to get rid of the dirt and look as though nothing had happened. The dirt, when it is rubbed and smudged and scraped, is more palpably dirt than the honest mud. ”

“ It whirls along clouds of dust from the red clay roads and fields which penetrates and clings to everything in the most extraordinary manner. All along the road the stems and lower branches of the trees are dyed a deep brick-dust color, and I hear moving and pathetic stories of how it ruins clothes, not only utterly spoiling black silk dresses, but staining white petticoats and children's frocks and pinafores with a border of color exactly like the ruddle with which sheep are branded. ”

“ Why go down into the two or three dirty, irregular, shabby little streets, with their dust or mud for road pavement, their nozzling pigs trotting along the sidewalks, their dung-heaps and masses of decaying vegetable matter, their utterly commonplace, mean and disheartening aspect everywhere? ”

“ They are so even, that you walk without fatigue; and we endeavour to forget the rough and slippery pavement on the Continent. These footpaths are kept constantly swept, and free from dust and dirt; and, as they are on a gentle slope, the wind and the sun soon dry them.
"Neither is here experienced the inconvenience of gutters, which, elsewhere, inundate passengers; and in storms, heavy rains, and floods, stop the way. ”

“ The middle of the street was full of irregular depressions, well adapted to retain the long swirls of dust and straw and twisted paper that the wind drove up and down its sad untended length; and toward the end of the day, when traffic had been active, the fissured pavement formed a mosaic of coloured hand-bills, lids of tomato-cans, old shoes, cigar-stumps and banana skins, cemented together by a layer of mud, or veiled in a powdering of dust, as the state of the weather determined. ”

“ So through streets within streets, dirt within dirt, room over room, in hopeless intricacy. Then we were brought to a standstill, a man was coming down the street with a bundle of wood, and we had to wait till he had gone by, the streets being too narrow for two persons to pass each other. ”

“ Side ditches are necessary because the thousands of tons of water which fall upon every mile of country road each year, in the form of rain or snow, should be carried away to some neighboring creek or other water channel as fast as the rain falls and the snow melts, so as to prevent its forming mud and destroying the surface of the road. When the ground is frozen and a heavy rain or sudden thaw occurs, the side ditch is the only means of getting rid of the surface water ”