The Green Forest tribune., 1913-09-12
What an Authority Has to Say on How
 To Build Good Roads.

To Build Good Roads.
 If you look at the ordinary country road after a shower you will see small puddles along the wheel ruts and some times larger pools. This water stays on the road surface because it cannot drain into the side dtches. If you look closely you will see side ditches which have grown up with bushes and weeds in many cases, and which are so far from the travelled part of the road that the rain water does not drain into them.
 That part of the road where the wagons travel is called the travelled way. To prevent water from standing on the travelled way the road should be raised in the center and slope gently into broad shallow ditches. It is then said to have a crown. If it is ten feet from the center of the road to the side ditch, the surface at the side ditch should be at least ten inches lower than it is in the center where the horses travel. The road then has a 10 inch crown. The rain that falls on a road properly crowned will run quick ly to the side and not soak into the sur face or form pools. The side ditches for surface water should run parallel to the right-of-way, and should be open at very low point so that the water can run out of them into neigh boring brooks or streams. If the ditches merely collect the water from the road surface and it cannot run away, large pools will be formed along the roadside, which will gradually soak into the soil beneath the road and make it so soft that the wheels of wagons will cut through the road sur face and soon destroy it.
 Sometimes water runs from land along the road and forms little stream down the wheel tracks or in the middle where the horses travel. When driVeways into farm yards are built across the side ditches they frequently form channels for water from the farm yard to run into the road. The pipes under the driveways become filled with leaves or rubbish and the water can no longer run away. If the driveways that stop the surface water were rebuilt so that no pipes were necessary and the ditch could be left open great deal of trouble from surface water would be stopped.
 Sometimes road crosses low ground or through swamp where the road cannot be drained by side ditches alone. If the road were built higher like railroad embarkment across such tow land and made with a crown, 1t would be dry and hard. Sometimes road passes through what is called a cut. This is place where the earth has been dug out so that the road can go over hill without being too steep. The water which always flows quietly under the ground on hill sides is known as ground water. In road cuts such water sometimes makes the road very muddy, and the road then needs what road builders call underdrainage. A good kind of underdrainage is a trench to go along under the side drain about three feet deep and a foot and half wide. In this trench a pipe is laid near the bottom and covered with loose stones no bigger than an egg. When the trench is completely filled with loose stones the ground water, in- stead of soaking into the roadway, will stop among the stones and flow down the hill through the pipe. To keep a road smooth and crowned the best method is to drag it with . road drag. A road drag is made easily with two halves of log which has been split The log should be about six or eight feet long The two halves of the log are set three feeC apart with smooth faces forward and upright. These are then fastened together with braces set in holes bored through the log.
 A pair of horses may be used to drag the road and are hitched to chain fastened to the front half of the log. The road drag should move forward so that it slants across the road in such a way that small amount of earth will slide past the smooth face of the log toward the center of the road, thus forming the crown. Tie edges of the logs will smooth out the ruts The best way to drag is to begin at the side ditch and go up one side of the road and come down the other. In the next trip the drag should be started a little nearer the center and the last trip over the road the drag may work near the center itself.
 Small ridges of earth will be thrown into the horse track and smeared by the round side of the log smoothly over the road thus making the surface of the road smooth and water tight after the sun comes out.
 The road is always dragged after a rain and never when it is dry. A good, strong pair of horses with a well built drag can drag about three or four miles of road in day, and it is the best way to maintain good roads. In every county some farmer along each four miles of road should own a drag l and drao tha road whao if rains end bo