The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-03-14
THRU SEAS OF MUD
j. Frank Smith Pictures Show
Conditions Kansas Roads.
Farmers Battling With Worst
Highway Season of Year.
MOTOR CARS MIRED HUB DEEP
Wheels of Mail Carts Garry
"TOn of Mud EACH"
Parallel bitches Similar to
Trenches in France.

Mud is not the only handicap Kan
sas farmers are experiencing in this,
the worst road season." in their eff
forts to travel Kansas highways. Many
of the photographs received by ].
Frank Smith, general manager of the
Kansas Good Roads association in his
worst road" picture contest reveal
general conditions during the last two
months due to the all but impossible
mud roads freezing. Persons submit
ting pictures write that it often is
possible to get thru the mud but
when these badly churned up high
ways freeze, neither horse-drawn We
hicle nor automobile can make head
way over them.
Some of the photographs recently
taken in western Kansas reveal con-
ditioLs that even hard surfaced high
ways would not eliminate. These de-
pict roads impossible being buried be-
meath snow drifts from ten to twenty
feet deep.
Autos Break Thru Ice.
Several marooned automobiles are
shown, mired wheel deep, when they
broke thru the frozen crust of mud.
One driver writes that he attempted an
overland trip over frozen roads and
all went lovely until the weight of the
car became too great. THE car would
have sunk to the tops of the wheels
had not the running boards and axles
rested on frozen mud" says the letter
accompanying the picture.
Several of the pictures show the
hardshipS of rural mail carriers. One
shows a two-wheeled cart, the wheels
of it, as the mail carrier wrote, carry
ing at least ton of mud" Another
show a rural carrier who used an
automobile. The car is hub deep in
the rutS and the letter explains that it
was the carriers last trip by auto to
date-February 20-as the road vas
impossible. The car of another r. F.
D. man is shown abandoned in a mud
hole thirty rods from the city limits"
The carrier had to wade out thru mud
and water knee deep
Hardship on School Children
A farmer submits several pictures
of a road over which children from
ten families have to pass twice a day,
going to and from school. The slope
of the road is towards the middle in
stead of from the middle out" he
writes. The pictures show eight chill
dren and the driver in a buggy drawn
by team, at four different points on
the road to school. The highway bears
the resemblance of a swamp and the
buggy is nearly hub deep. The writer
asks: 1.-The children have to use this
road twice a day. Do you think they
will grow up into cheerful taxpayers?"s
Three pictures from the Kansas oil
fields were taken, says the letter ex-
planning the at intervals of perhaps
one hundred yards in one mud hole"
The double row of parallel bitches
might be taken for the first and sec
ond line trenches somewhere in
France" but the writer explains they
are merely ruts in the highway, from
which a vehicle would have a most
difficult time "going over the top
He adds: eff there is any place in the
state that hard surfaced roads are
needed it is in the oil field where there
is a great deal of heavy hauling
Use Railroad Right of Way.
A milkman submits a picture of his
wagon and team. the mud rolled up
on the wheels until they look like mud
cylinders a foot or more thick. 81
think this will win first prize writes
the milkman. eff you have a worse
one I would like to see it,
A section of the Santa Fe trail in far
western Kansas is shown in one pic
ture- The entrant writes: ut is i'm
possible for car to go thru this place.
People use the railroad right of way,
where you see my car Gin the picture.)
The mud is so deep in the rut that a
car settles to the axles."