The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-05-02
Good Roads.


ton essays written for bicycle, offered
as prize by the Pope Manufacturing
Co.:
Maine has many natural advantages
for making her 'sthe great summer gar
den of the country" position to which
she is fast attaining in spite of the i'm
pediment offered by her bad roads.
What Il she were as famous for good
roads as she is for prohibition! Would
they not add greatly to her natural at
uactlonsP The vicinity of Portland is
noted for its beautiful drives. Drives?
The scenery is grand, but the driues are
anything but beautiful. Perhaps some
of us do not really know what the condi-
ton of most of the highways in Maine is.
see a street, which should be the main
artery of traffic between three cities,
Portland, Deering and Westbrook, little
used in the best of weather,
and in the spring or fall
almost entirely deserted because of the
mud, which varies in depth from one to
eight inches. At one place, few days
ago, light express team sank in the
mud until the hubs of the wheels ac-
tually dragged in the dirt. At another
place the earth is in such state that it
shakes and quivers beneath passing
team, reminding one of the quicksands.
On roda like this single team with
load of 500 lbs requires great effort on
the part of the horse to haul it through
the mud and, with the frequent ''breath-
ing spells progress of about a mile and
half an hour is made. It has been
shown that on good road this Same
team could easily carry a load of 1900 lbs.
at the rate of three miles an hour, thus
doing stG times as much eyork in the same
number of hours. Just cast up in your
mind and see what that means in dollars
saved each year by the loaded teams
alone that pass over this road enough to
macadamize a good many miles of it?
Then add in the cost of the frequent
painting and repairing of carriages,
wagons etc., which is made necessary by
bad roads, and you will get some idea of
of what good roads mean to our pocket
books.
But the foregoing are minor points of
consideration when we consider the rise
in land value that they will cause. Why
they tell us that in places where good
roads have been established farms which
previous to their building could not be
sold for $75 an acre cannot now be
bought for 5000 per acre.
Another road the principal resident
street of one city, and the thoroughfare
leading from it to the metropolis of
Maine has in the past twenty years cost
over 10000 to keep in repairs, or rather,
sunk in the mud of the road
along with layer after layer of
sand, crushed rock, clam shells,
etc., and now it is no better than
it ever was. On the contrary an old in
habitant of that district says that it was
better 20 years ago than it is now, and
that if the 800, 900 had been scientifically
expended on this street, the city would
now be $4,000 richer in real estate.
Strange as it may seem, this is the kind
of repairing that was done on this road.
When hole or pitch in it got so bad
as to be actually dangerous, then load
Oft didn't seem to matter what-was
dumped at the spot so as to temporarily
bridge over the danger, but without the
least regard for the road making quail
ties of the material used. Why, on an
other road in this same city saw, a
short time ago, within space less than
two roods square, three depressions in
the surface filled one with sand, one
with round stones and the third with
crushed rock, and there still remained
two holes, small, but deep enough to
break horses leg. What a pictured A
great many people, to the certain knowl-
edge of resident, have been detained
from erecting valuable buildings in this
city for no other reason than the condi-
ton of her roads.
How many business men would be
glad to have residences in the country if
it were not for the rivers of mud. chaos
of holes and hummocks, not to mention
dust, which make up the greater part of
the country roads in Maine, and effectu-
ally cut them off from their place of
business!.
Ignorance in regard to making good
roads and keeping them in repair can no
longer be pleaded as an excuse for allow
ing this state of things to go on. The
literature of the day is full of the subject
There are few people to-day, think,
who do not believe in the paying advant-
age of good roads but it appears with
most to be a passive conviction. We are
not awake to the fact that we are losing
money every day that we endure poor
roads.
Let us have better roads than can be
made by piling a lot of dirtin the middle
of a street each spring, only to have it
washed back during the summer. Let
us have cutters that will carry off water,
not simply bitches for collecting it and
undermining the road.
When the proper authorities see that
this is done, the old Pine Tree state will
show the world that she can s'hold her
pace" in other ways than with her cele-
DRAFTED trotters.