The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1899-05-24
Y Wednesday, MAY "a, 1899.
Wind and Permanent Roads.

uelRnDOTluR Guilty Paioulh5 'hO "
gion, with prayer and imposing ceremo-
NAL for the abatement of the caterpil.
lar plague.
Vermont seems to have instituted
similar course against the plague of
poor roads. Professions of road COM
missoners, headed by Father Wall,
high priest of the permanent road"
propaganda, have been proceeding
through the State by counties, trying
the charm of their incantations upon
the plague they were ordained to abate.
Saturday the Reverend Father, in the
town of his recent career and distinc-
ton as law breaker, appeared at the
head of few of the parish road domin-
les of Washington county to try his
powers upon the plague at the heart of
the State.
Thereare several particularly good
subjects leading out from the Capital
upon which the chief charmer could
test the wisdom of his theories and the
practicability and efficiency of his
methods. Wind is an effective agency
for drying up muddy roads, but for
keeping them dry and traversable in
wet weather and when the annual up
heavel comes with the coming of
spring, the efficiency of either the
breezes of nature or the human breath
is subject to very serious deductions.
Something entering deeper to the roots,
below the frost, of the problem, some
thing more enduring, something not so
Internationally cheap, and yet some
thing within the limits of reasonable
and possible expenditure of the aver
age town, must be devised and COM
mended to the attention of its inhab-
tants. An example of road building,
practicable in respect of method and
cost, and sufficiently enduring to be re-
garded as permanent, is what the in
habitants of this region would rejoice
to see, and seeing would embrace. No
large amount of rhetoric would be re-
CURED to persuade them; no political
corduroying could be imposed upon
them by any of the Establishments of
official appointees.
Leading off from WinoUski Avenue
-erstwhile Berlin streets the be-
ginning of much travelled highway,
locally known as "the Scoville hill
road" 1t was laid out sometime dur
ing the first half Of the century. What
ever the precise date of its first con-
struction, this road could hardly have
been, in the first days of It's creation,
in worse condition than in the spring
of every year of its subsequent exis-
tence, and particularly in the spring of
this year of grace aud permanent road
agitation, 1899. For half century or
longer this road has been "worked"
every spring-time, at more or less cost
to the town, and has invariably return
ed the ensuing spring to its primitive
condition of mud, quagmire and frost
upheavals. 1t has been impossible for
loaded teams and hardly passable for
light wagon travel. This road, and its
continuation beyond Scoville hill, is for
weeks in the spring the despair of per-
sons compelled to travel it. For fifty
years or longer the shiftless, wastetul
policy of road repair generally preva-
lent in the State has been pursued.
Money enough has been expended up
on this road, several times over, to
make every rod of it ga permanent
road" traversable at all times of the
year by loaded vehicles or other travel,
under some system of road construc-
ton of demonstrated permanence and
economy or practicability of construc-
ton. To-day it is in its condition of
original disorder. This road is type
of thousands of other roads in Vermont.
When the method to be employed in
rebuilding such roads on basis of
permanency is devised, its practicable.
ity demonstrated and the cost shown to
be reasonable and within the means of
the people to be benefited, the ''good
road" or permanent road'' problem
will be solved, and the practical appli-
cation of the methods will be only q
matter of detail.
What the rural communities of Yer
mont want to know is, Ho,o to build
permanent roads, and at reasonable
and possible cost. If Commissioner
Vial is in possession of the informa-
ton, and would make practical dem
onstration of the problem on piece of
road of the kind described, and hold
there State convention of road COM
mssioners, he would not need to en-
ploy much exhortation or the tricks of
parliamentary practice TO secure their
application throughout Vermont. A
competent State road commissioner