Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1916-06-21
DRAIN THE ROADS.
First and Most Important Move In
Highway Construction.

Year by year people everywhere are
taking hold in a larger way of the
work of road construction or road i'm
prOvement; and along this line they
are eXpending more time, effort and
money. And as the work goes along it
becomes more and more apparent that
the first and most essential move to-
wards making a road right and keep
ing it right is to get proper and ade-
quate draining. Along this line the
Wisconsin Highway Commission
makes suggestions as follows.
The past two months or more has
probably seen the ordinary roads in
Wisconsin in worse condition than at
any time in recent years.
Probably due to great depth of frost
and the fact that because of cold
slowly, there have been excessive ac-
cumulations of water near the sur
face of the ground which caused the
roads to be much worse than usual.
Surface drainage has been lacking,
and underground drainage or tile
drainage is almost unknown.
1t is especially noticeable that at or
near the top of any hill of even mod
crate height, there has been almost
invariably a place badly cut through
and practically impossible. All in
all, the general condition of roads has
been much worse than it should be
considering the demands of modern
travel.
Before evidence of these sink holes
and springy places disappear, mark
the place of their occurrence, and
some time during this year have the
side bitches we'll opened alongside all
of those points so that surface water
will be carried off promptly and free
ly; and in the worst of these places,
there should be put in a line OF or
6 inch thing at the side of the road
which is next to the higher ground,
draining out to some suitable outlet,
backfilling the trench with coarse
gravel or small stone. Care as to sur
face drainage and placing of tile at
these spring holes will yield astound-
ing results next spring in the bettered
condition of road surfaces.
If several times during the summer
the superintendent will go over the
roads in their charge Immediately af-
ter rains, mark the points where wa
ter is held in the bitches, and when
the roads dry out, deepen the bitches
so as to enable the water to get away
from these points, good results will
also be secured. The trouble with all
roads this spring may be summed up
in the few words, "lack of drainage"
There is no way in which road mon
ey can be spent to better advantage
than by marking these spring holes
at this time, curing them with open
bitches or tile drain, or both, when
they dry up, and after rains this sum-
mer marking all places where water
stands in the road bitches, afterward
correcting these road bitches so that
water will flow freely and quickly
along and away from the road.
This drainage is much more i'm
portant than just running over of
your road mileage with the road ma
chine without the drainage attended
to. Road grading and road dragging
are excellent if drainage is first pro-
vided for, but practically useless if it
has not been provided for. If you
can't get both the drainage and road
machine work done, by all means give
up the road machine work.
Cannot everybody work together
make 1916 a year distinguished in the
road history of Wisconsin by the fact
that more intense and intelligent act
ion was taken in that year to secure
proper drainage on all roads than
ever before in the history of the state?