The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-12-15

of road in his county.
proved equally from one end of the
county to the other. No Partially to
any section has been shown. The roags
around Opelika and the other towns
are in no better condition than those
in the remostest corners of the county
Points of Distinction.
The other point of distinction is that
though the system has been built up in
the last four years every dollar of the
work Is paid for. There is no bond
issue, warrant or other evidence of
debt against the county on the road
account.
l can name several counties in the
state that has about exhausted their
legal credit in the issuance of bonds.
have built a few miles of road In ali
directions from the county seat or prin-
cipal towns and can go no further. The
people beyond the limit of these an
provements are taxed for the improve
menus but get only a part of the bene-
fits. They must still carry the mini
mum loads on their wagons on ac
count of the bad roads they must cross
before they reach the good roads or
course the good roads are valuable as
Tor as they go and inspire the demand
for complete county systems. but when
a county exhausts its financial power
1t can go no further, and the people
must walt
Probate Judge J. b. Lyons plan in
Lee county is we'll worth studying. Let
him tell you about it,
Judge Lyon Talks.
Lee county has 600 miles of public
roads. Every mile has been improved
and the county does not owe one dollar
for the work.
How did we do 1t? BY slow, hard
work, of course. and by following a
system that has been fair to every sec
ton of the county.
When We began about four years
ago we had one scrape. We put this
to work rounding up the roads and
draining the road bed. We gradually
increased equipment until we now have
six scrapes. They are distributed to
the best advantage over the four coi1-
missioners' districts of the county. Each
commissioner has direct supervision
over the road work in his district. We
have special road tax of 25c on the
hundred dollars and the IS per capita
road tax. This produces a fund of
about $4,000 per year.
Convicts on Roads.
1.-TWO years we failed to get a sat-
isfactory bid for our convicts and they
were placed on the roads. We will
have to have mighty good bid if they
are ever taken of the the roads.
But to return. The first time over
the roads we devoted our work to prop
er drainage This is the first principle
of road building. Water must not stand
in the road anywhere nor be allowed
to penetrate the road bed IL possible.
You must have perfect cross and lat
eral drainage.
plished We began to improve the road
bed BY cutting down grades and filing
IN the low places.
much Improvement along this line was
accomplished in the second trip over
the roads, Occasionally we had to send
back squads to make repairs after very
heavy rains but as the system pro-
crossed we found this necessity to be
less and less frequent.
I'VE have sand and clay soils in Lee
county but they do not appear together
in many instances. 1t has been demon
strated that clay and sand combined
make the finest roads in this county
We carried the clay to the sand and the
sand to the clay.
up to this time we have gone over
the entire system of 600 miles about four
times and have splendid highways. But
we are not done. We only have I'M
proved roads. We will not be satisfied
until we have good roads.
Cut Down Grades.
every time we go over the system we
cut down the hills and fill up the hollows
little more.
IF we had floated an issue of bonds |
in the beginning we wuuld have been |
compelled to put the money at work at |
once without the careful preparation OF |
grades and then it would have been I'M |
possible to issue enough bonds to COM
plete system over the entire county.