LAYING OUT A ROAD. 211 



Under the head of laying out roads, something should be said 

 of their width. Speaking only of such roads as are not apt to 

 turn into streets from their proximity to towns and cities, it is 

 well not to make them too broad, for the less the width, the less 

 the cost of construction and maintenance, and a good 23 feet 

 road is much better than a poor one 40 or more feet wide. Each 

 rod (16|^ feet) in width adds two acres per mile to the road. 

 An agreeable form of road is to have on each, or on one side of 

 the same a strip, 5 or 6 feet wide, sodded, and then a sidewalk 

 equal in width to one-eighth the width of the roadway. The 

 intervening strip above mentioned, is planted with trees and at 

 intervals of 200-250 feet furnishes storage places, 80 or 40 long, 

 for the materials used in the road repairs. The width of first, 

 second and third class roadways may be given as 26, 18i- and 13 

 feet, with a tendency during the last ten years to have none, 

 except in the vicinity of cities, wider than 24 feet, and the rest 

 correspondingly narrower. In view of the changes constantly 

 going on in this country in the value and settlement of land, it 

 would probably be well always to lay out a road 50 or 60 feet 

 wide, but to bvild the road proper of the widths above indicated. 



With all these rules and data in mind, the real work of actu- 

 ally laying out the road on the ground and on a map is next in 

 order, and this comes so entirely within the province of the civil 

 engineer, and is a matter requiring so much explanation and 

 study, that it cannot well be introduced within the limits of this 

 treatise. It is in this part of the work that a little skill and 

 labor well spent may be productive of very great saving in the 

 cost of the whole work and it should not be left to the inexpe- 

 rienced or unskilful.* 



* Gillispie, in Ms treatise on " Roads and Eailroads," gives two forcible 

 instances of the amount those roads which might properly be called chance 

 roads, can be improved by a road-maker of skill and understanding. An 

 old road in Anglesea, England, rose and fell, between its two extremities, 

 twenty-four miles apart, a total perpendicular amount of 3,540 feet; while 

 a new road, laid out by Telford between the same points, rose and fell only 

 2,257 feet ; so that 1,283 feet of perpendicular height is now done away 

 with, which every horse passing over the road had previously been obliged 

 to ascend and descend with its load. The new road is besides two miles 

 shorter. The other case is that of a plank-road built in the State of New 

 York, between the villages of Cazenovia and Chittenango. Both these 

 villages are situated on Chittenango Creek, the former being eight hundred 

 feet higher than the latter. The most level common road between these 



