FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 



537 



IMPORTANCE OF DRAINAGE IN GOOD ROADS CONSTRUCTION. 



Address of Professor A. Mars ton, Dean of Division of Engineering, Iowa 

 State College, Before the Iowa State Drainage Convention, Ames, Iowa, 

 January 13-14, 1905. 



It gives me pleasure to have the privilege of addressing this audience 

 tonight upon a subject so important to good roads as that of their drainage. 

 It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the good roads 

 problem to Iowa, as all the business of our agricultural interests must be 

 transacted over these roads and hence upon their reliability and condition all 

 the prosperity of our State depends to a close degree, and not only our pros- 

 perity but our progress in intellectual and social lines. 



Fig-. 1.— Badly Drained Earth Head Near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 



This road was practically impassable at the time and is a fair sample of many Iowa roads 



in the spring. 



By act of the last legislature this college was made the State Highway 

 Commission of Iowa, and by action of our board of trustees, the work of 

 this commission has been entrusted to Dean C. F. Curtiss, of the Agricul- 

 tural Division and to myself as dean of the Engineering Division. Mr. T. H. 

 McDonald has been employed to take immediate charge of the work, and 

 Prof. C. J. Zintheo has assisted from the side of good roads machinery. 



The importance of the road problem in our State may be understood 

 further when I say that we have about one thousand miles of country roads, 

 for the care and improvement of which we now raise and expend over three 

 million five hundred thousand dollars per annum. The traffic over our 

 country road amounts probably to about fifty-five million miles of heavy 



