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Jim Rader's Web site www.rader.org |
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EARLY ROADS.The first roads in the newly settled country were narrow worn lanes, scarce two feet wide, lightly trodden over pine needles and fallen leaves among the tree trunks by the soft moccasined feet of the tawny savages as they silently walked in Indian file through the forests. These paths were soon deepened and worn bare by the heavy hobnailed shoes of the early settlers. Others were formed by the slow tread of domestic cattle, the best of all path-makers, as they wound around the hillsides to pasture or to drinking place. Then a scarcely broader bridle-path for horses, perhaps with blazed trees as guide posts, widened slowly to traveled roads and uneven cart ways. These roads followed and still wind today in the very lines of the footpath and the cattle track. Wet and marshy places were laid with poles cut in ten foot lengths and laid closely across the road. Some of these laid with pine poles served their purpose after a use of fifty years. They were called corduroy roads, and was the first effort at road improvement. The first turnpike in America was made when I was a small boy (1785-86) in Virginia, starting at Alexandria and extending down the Shenandoah Valley. It was at a tavern on this turnpike, while on a cattle drive to Petersburg, with my master, that I saw George Washington. I was a small boy, and did not then know how great a man he really was, but I well remember how he looked.
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