ROADS AND STREETS 



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ROADS AND STREETS 



ROADS AND STREET 



.OADS AND STREETS. The word 

 road is drrivrd from the same source as ride. 

 and in its broadest sense refers to a public way 

 connecting towns and rural communities. High- 

 way is a more formal term, with the same mean- 

 ing, but it properly refers only to a main or 

 principal road, as distinguished from one of 

 minor importance. An improved road between 

 two large cities may be called a highway, but 

 the ordinary dirt road of the rural districts de- 

 serves the less imposing name. The term street, 

 though it formerly meant any paved road, now 

 refers only to the roadways in towns and cities. 

 The word street is derived from the Latin strata 

 via, meaning paved way. 



Roads and highways have always been an in- 

 dex of national greatness, as well as an impor- 

 tant factor in the advancement of a people. It 

 has been true, almost without exception, that 

 the older a country is and the more developed 

 its civilization, the better roads it has had. The 

 power and culture of Rome were shown in the 

 splendid system of highways connecting the im- 

 perial city with distant provinces. Even in 

 England, far from Rome, the Romans left their 

 mark in a number of great roads, and on the 

 continent their roads remain to this day. Many 

 of the Roman roads, built from 1,500 to 2,000 

 years ago, are the foundations of modern high- 

 ways, and a few of them are still in use, with 

 practically no improvement, just as the Romans 

 left them. As late as the eighteenth century 

 roads in France and other parts of Europe were 

 built by methods only slightly different from 

 those of the ancient Romans. 



Roads in Europe. In nearly all of the na- 

 tions of Europe the public roads are under the 

 general supervision of the government, and are 

 directly in charge of trained engineers. They 

 may be divided into two groups the national 

 roads, properly called highways, and the local 

 roads, the care of which is in the hands of the 

 local communities. A few good roads existed 

 in Central Europe even in medieval times; an 

 English law on roads was passed as early as 1285, 

 and the first tolls for the repair of roads were 



collected in 1346. France was for several cen- 

 turies the leader in the improvement of roads, 

 and taken as a whole, the roads of France, to- 

 gether with those of Switzerland, are probably 

 the best in the world to-day. Great Britain has 

 excellent roads in the remoter rural districts as 

 well as near the towns, and the smoothness of 

 English roads is proverbial. Germany, too, has 

 an extensive system of fine roads, and the king- 

 dom of Prussia, with an area half that of Texas, 

 has about 75,000 miles of improved roads, about 

 one-third as much as the mileage of improved 

 roads for the whole United States. An unim- 

 proved dirt road, in fact, will be found with dif- 

 ficulty in any part of Western Europe, and 

 where one is found it is only a minor link in a 

 great highway system. 



In Canada and the United States. In 

 America an entirely different condition exists. 

 Except in the cities, and with one or t\vo other 

 conspicuous exceptions, there were few improved 

 roads of importance either in Canada or the 

 United States until after 1880. Europe has only 

 one-half the road mileage of the United States, 

 but its proportion of improved roads is several 

 times as great. At the present time, although 

 much progress has already been made, only ten 

 per cent of the road mileage in the United States 

 is improved, and in Canada the percentage is 

 even less. The reason for this condition is not 

 far to seek, nor is it as yet a disgraceful one. 

 Europe had roads, and good roads, too, when 

 the American continent was unknown to Euro- 

 peans. Until the nineteenth century the greater 

 part of North America still had no roads, and 

 only in the states along the Atlantic coast was 

 there any considerable mileage. About 1800 the 

 United States was literally in the midst of a pe- 

 riod of turnpike construction. This was only a 

 passing phase of road construction, but the pri- 

 vately-owned turnpike, with a tollgate every 

 five or ten miles, remained in common use un- 

 til some time after the War of Secession. Be- 

 tween 1792, when the first turnpike was author- 

 ized, and 1812, over 300 charters for such roads 

 were granted to private companies, over 4,500 



