Rural road

“ Last, but not least, is the road to the farm. Every free-born American demands a public highway in front of his house; if farms are small there must then be a highway about every mile, or, at most, every two miles. This leads to cutting up the country into enlarged checkerboards, to a multiplication of highways so great that none of them can be kept passably good without overtaxing the land which adjoins them. ”

“ I pulled up at one quiet spot under the shelter of some overhanging trees for refreshment and for a rest, and there I stopped for an hour or more, and not a soul either driving, riding, cycling, or afoot went by. It was a cross-country road, apparently little used, and one to be enjoyed for its quietude and rural pleasantness. It surprised me how often I came upon such long stretches of almost deserted roads; we travelled far on that stage before we met a human being. ”

“ Sometimes this same brother would get permission to take me on a longer excursion,—to visit the old homestead at "The Farms." Three or four miles was not thought too long a walk for a healthy child of five years; and that road, in the old time, led through a rural Paradise, beautiful at every season,—whether it were the time of song-sparrows and violets, of wild roses, of coral-hung barberry-bushes, or of fallen leaves and snow-drifts. The wildness of the road, now exchanged for elegant modern cultivation, was its great charm to us. ”

“ In rural districts, where the roads are used for immediate neighborhood purposes, an inexpensive road is desirable. The main thoroughfares have to be constructed with a view to considerable increase of travel, as farmers in the outlying districts who formerly devoted their time to grazing of stock, raising of grain, etc., find it more profitable to change the mode of farming to that of truck raising, fruit growing, etc. ”

“ Again, some highway surveyors have very little taste for rural beauty, and show very poor judgment, and perhaps now and then a little spite, in ploughing up the green grass by the roadside and sometimes in front of houses. ”

“ The road lying in front, or between the different sections of the farm, should be as well, and as cleanly kept as any portion of the enclosures, and it is equally a sin against good taste and neighborhood-morality, to have it otherwise. ”

“ Good roads, like good streets, make habitation along them most desirable; they economize time and force in transportation of products, reduce wear and tear on horses, harness and vehicles, and enhance the market value of real estate. They raise the value of farm lands and farm products, and tend to beautify the country through which they pass; they facilitate rural mail delivery and are a potent aid to education, religion, and sociability. Charles Sumner once said: "The road and the schoolmaster are the two most important agents in advancing civilization." ”

“ When John Frederick Oberlin began his remarkable work of community building in the stagnant villages of the Vosges Mountains, his very first move was to build a road. The status of any civilization is fairly clearly indicated by the condition of the highways. The first sign of rural decay in a discouraged community has often been the neglect of the thoroughfares. One of the widespread signs of rural progress is the recent attention given to good roads. ”

“ POOR roads constitute the greatest drawback to rural life, and for the lack of good roads the farmers suffer more than any other class. It is obviously unnecessary, therefore, to discuss here the benefits to be derived by them from improved roads. Suffice it to say, that those localities where good roads have been built are becoming richer, more prosperous, and more thickly settled, while those which do not possess these advantages in transportation are either at a standstill or are becoming poorer and more sparsely settled. ”

“ Piedmont belts tend strongly towards urban development, even where rural settlement is sparse. Sparsity of population and paucity of towns within the mountains cause main of traffic to keep outside the highlands, but close enough to their base to tap their trade at every valley outlet. On the alluvial fans or plains of these valley outlets, where mountain and piedmont road intersect, towns grow up. ”

“ Turning sharply to the left as soon as the village is reached, we pass a kind of pleasant rural street, if that may be called a street which has houses only on the one side of it, and just as we emerge into the country again, find ourself at a spot where the road forks, a portion of it going over a beck bridge into a farm enclosure by a picturesque old water-mill and byre, and a portion of it,—the main road {170} to Loweswater,—bending sharply to the right to go across the valley by the north side of the stream, which is here hidden from view by a long barn building. ”

“ Yet, in light soils, their shade is grateful to the highway traveler, and not, perhaps, injurious to the crops of the adjoining field; and when of proper kinds, they add grace and beauty to the domain in which they stand. 130 We do not, therefore, indiscriminately recommend them, but leave it to the discretion of the farmer, to decide for himself, having seen estates equally pleasant with, and without trees on the roadside. Nothing, however, can be more beautiful than a clump of trees in a pasture-ground, with a herd, or a flock beneath them, near the road ”

“ Highways constructed without the addition of surfacing material to the natural soil of the right-of-way are usually called earth roads. But if the natural soil exhibits peculiar characteristics or is of a distinct type, the road may be referred to by some distinctive name indicating that fact. Hence, roads are referred to as clay, gumbo, sandy or caliche roads as local custom may elect. ”

“ Believing that good roads and the love of rural life are essential to the true happiness and lasting prosperity of any people, these pages have been written with the sincere desire to do something to improve our roads and to encourage country life; and they are now given to the public with the hope that they will exert some little influence in promoting these objects. ”

“ The rural roads, as I have said, are shocking, especially after wet weather, for they are no more than tracks across mother earth. But man is an adaptable creature, and the Englishman gets used to the bad roads. ”

“ The high-roads lie as a rule along the backs of the uplands, and the villages stand on the windy heights. The lines of railway which run along the valley tend to create a new species of valley village, but the old hamlets, with their grey-stone high-backed churches, with slender shingled spires, stand aloft, the pure air racing over them. The ancient manors and granges are as a rule built in the more sheltered and sequestered valleys, approached from the high-road by winding wood-lanes of exquisite beauty. ”

“ The work itself will cover a wide field including clearance of slums, which for adequate reasons cannot be undertaken by private capital; in rural housing of several kinds, where, again, private capital is unable to function; in rural electrification; in the reforestation of the great watersheds of the Nation; in an intensified program to prevent soil erosion and to reclaim blighted areas; in improving existing road systems and in constructing national highways designed to handle modern traffic; in the elimination of grade crossings; ”

“ Nowhere is its coming heralded by an avenue of obsequious trees, it forces its way through no vaulted gateway, it lingers by no village green, it knows not the scent of a garden nor the luscious green of a cultivated field. Neither the farmer’s cart nor the lumbering diligence will be met with on this unamiable road, nor will its quiet be disturbed by the patter of a flock of sheep nor by a company of merry villagers on their way to the fair. ”

“ Roads place the city and the town in connection with the village and the farm, open up markets for field produce, and provide outlets for manufactures. They enable the natural resources of a country to be developed, facilitate travelling and intercourse, break down local jealousies, and in all ways tend to bind together society and bring out fully that healthy spirit of industry which is the life and soul of every nation.
The road is so necessary an instrument of social wellbeing, that in every new colony it is one of the first things thought of. ”

“ Instead of finding a thief concealed behind each bush, or a Salvator Rosa face scowling from a ruined hovel, or peeping from a jutting crag at every turn, there is an excellent turnpike-road all the way, three-fourths perfectly level, skirted with hedges, corn-fields, orchards and vineyards, populous with hamlets and villages, with labourers at work in the fields, and with crowds of peasants in gay, picturesque attire, and with healthy, cheerful, open, but manly countenances, passing along, either to or from the different market-towns. ”

“ The whole countryside is aswarm with Nature lovers from the near by city. First come the makers of forbidden beverages, trooping across fields and lawns, picking the once despised dandelion and anything else that happens to be loose; then the happy motorists in long procession, embowering their cars in the spoil of orchards, woodlands, and wayside shrubberies. If there are no flowers near the road these free-and-easy visitors will penetrate one’s garden and break off the blooming branches of the rhododendrons or lilacs or whatever other bush happens to engage their fancy. ”

“ The highway which runs a bowshot from my bower-eaves is a much-travelled road, leading from the farms of a prairie country into a prairie town. It is a stripe of black earth fifteen or twenty feet wide, the natural color of the soil, ungraded, ungravelled, and just now half a foot deep in mud from the melting February snows. Looking in the direction from which it comes, a mile or two of rolling prairie-land is visible, divided into farms of one hundred, one hundred and forty or one hundred and sixty acres. ”

“ We have a bumpy road in leaving the city, followed by a fine stretch of smooth, beautiful cement highway. On through rolling green country we drive, and into the suburb of Burlingame with its vine covered and rose embowered bungalows, and its houses of brown shingle and of stucco. The finer places sit far back from the road in aristocratic privacy, with big, grassy parks shaded by noble trees in front, and with the green foothills as a background. ”

“ At the cross-ways beyond, the motor swerves to avoid collision with a wagon-load of tackle and provisions, and chauffeur and oxman pull up for a moment's gossip as to the party going "in."
For nine miles the road runs through the deep woods without passing a habitation. Then rough farms appear amid fields of stumpage, succeeded by a little realm of cultivated orchards and flowering lawns, a transformation confusing enough after the wilderness just traversed, and the still denser woods waiting to engulf the car. To the left there are fleeting glints of blue where the lake chain uncoils. ”

“ There is a narrow road which leaves the main one, and penetrates behind the river-hills, only to find others, lower and more heavily wooded, with now and then odd-shaped bits of pasture-land wedged in between their sides, or else low brick farm-houses set in a field of corn and potatoes, with a dripping pump-trough at the door. It is a thorough country-road, lazy, choking itself up with mud even in summer, to keep city-carriages out, bordering itself with slow-growing maples and banks of lush maiden's-hair, blood-red partridge-berries, and thistles. ”

“ It lay out of the beaten track, and any one wanting to visit it must needs climb the long winding road that led from the plain beneath, through olive groves and sheepfields, up to the city gate—a steep, difficult road, leading nowhere but to the little town itself. ”

“ The flanking valleys of approach draw to themselves the human life of the mountains. Their upper settlements show a certain common physiognomy, born of their relation to the barren transit region above, except in those few mountain districts of advanced civilization where railroads have introduced through traffic over the barrier. At the foot of the final ascent to the pass, where often the carriage road ends and where mule-path or foot-trail begins, is located a settlement that lives largely by the transmontane travel. ”

“ Driving through the long woodland way, shaded and chilly when you are out of the sun; across the Great Works River and its pretty elm-grown intervale; across the short bridges of brown brooks; delayed now and then by the sight of ripe strawberries in sunny spots by the roadside, one comes to a higher open country, where farm joins farm, and the cleared fields lie all along the highway, while the woods are pushed back a good distance on either hand. The wooded hills, bleak here and there with granite ledges, rise beyond. ”

“ Their enjoyment of these social opportunities will be much more general if the public highways are at all times in a condition to be traveled in comfort. Good homes and good schools on good roads are prerequisites to the solution of many rural problems. ”

“ The building of state roads between village centers has almost necessitated paving or hard roads in the village, for people resent traveling over a good road in the open country and then plowing through mud holes in a village. ”

“ The only possible way of doing justice to the scenery is to halt at the little stations where poor villages have been planted at the opening of lateral ravines, and thence follow the river by a footpath as far as it will lead.
The ascent of the river by train is indeed one of the great curiosities of the country, and it will be done generally in this way till the authorities of the department undertake to drive a carriage-road up the gorge. It is true that the villages are few, the population small, and trade a negligible quantity at present. ”