738 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
You take a level stretch, of road and you have to throw it up every 
year and every time it rains it softens it and lowers it, and the frost and 
spring rains soften and lower it. 
In a hilly road the washing makes it higher where the wind blows, 
and if it is dusty, on a level road, it blows the dust away, and it is lower. 
Weeds and trash gather at the sides of the road and is hard to get away 
unless you run the grader and throw them out. Weeds and grass are 
harder to keep down on a level road and they grow more rank than on 
clay, hilly roads. 
How I fix deep gullies that are from ten to twenty feet deep and the 
ditches at the side of the road, which have almost taken the road I cut 
the bridge down two to four feet or put in tube plow in the ditches, and 
lower the road and widen it. I leave crack near the end of the bridge 
so that water will run under the bridge and not wash the abutments. 
If the dirt lodges on the bridge, running across it with the drag runs it 
down the cracks and keeps it clean. This is quickly done and easily 
kept up. Make culvert with 2^/^ inch crack. 
There was a bridge on a large gulley and the ditches on both sides of 
the road for seven or eight rods had gotten so narrow that it was almost 
impossible in wet weather to drive to the bridge. I spoke to the county 
commissioner about it. Told my ideas and he didn't like them, but told 
me to go ahead. I cut the bridge down three feet and plowed in the 
ditches, and lowered the middle of the road. It cost about fifteen dollars. 
You would hardly notice the slope. That was about three years ago, and 
it hasn't needed any work since. 
Some years ago I plowed two furrows on each side of a hill road and 
I never got back there to work it. The ditches got two or three feet 
deep and the people were complaining that ditches would take the road. 
A Mr. Brown who took the road work and followed my plans told them 
he would fix it. He plowed some dirt for his men to scrape and went to 
the hill, put one horse in the ditch and plowed one furrow on each side 
of ditch and went one more round throwing the dirt toward the ditch 
from the inside, and went three or four rounds with a drag and had a 
beautiful road twenty-two feet wide, only costing one-half hours work. 
If those ditches had not been there it could not have been done for less 
than four or five dollars. You put the water in the right place and it 
will help to make a road. You drag such a road and hit the bank moving 
the ditch over, and the water will lower it, and in a few years you can 
get the ditches over far enough so they will not harm the road. 
Wherever you find two low places requiring culverts, with a small 
raise between, if not too expensive, cut the raise down, using only one 
culvert where two would have formerly been necessary. 
Six years ago there was a ditch ten feet and twenty feet wide, the 
people had filled it With logs and the water ran through between the 
logs, after every big rain they would settle and they would have to put 
on another layer of logs. I 'phoned to the county commissioner and told 
him that this place would have to be fixed; he said they would have to 
put in a bridge; I told him I could put in a fill and run the water down 
the hill for fifteen dollars, and he said for me to do it. I fired the logs 
