120 



The charges in this case are about 88 cents per ton-mile. The average cost 

 of transportation in the United States by wagon is 23 cents per ton-mile. 



The old law that every man must work on the roads six days annually 

 is enforced feebly. By a statute passed in 1894, road taxes can be levied by 

 the county and a road commissioner appointed. But this new law is 

 proving a failure in the mountains and is giving way to the old custom 

 because the mountain county is too poor to pay the commissioner's salary, 

 and because the mountain man may pay the tax in work, a fact which 

 introduces again the old problem of road-work enforcement. In 1904 the 

 total expenditures upon the highways in a number of rugged mountain 

 counties amounted to about §24 per mile. The average expenditure for the 

 State, much less dissected, was $43.57. The history of the mountain roads 

 emphasizes the inability of the people to provide themselves with efficient 

 bighways, and manifests the great need for outside help, state or federal. 

 In general, road material would have to be imported at great expense. 

 The costs of roads steadily increase as the forest retreats towards the 

 headwaters. 



In 1907 the United States Department of Public Roads, as an object 

 lesson, built and macadamized in Johnson County, 5,780 feet of road, and 

 constructed through Cumberland Gap. 12,300 feet of macadam pike, and 

 graded 900 feet more, at a total cost of $7,050 per mile. This work demon- 

 strates again that the construction of good highways in the mountain 

 region, while possible, cannot be done without outside help. Besides the 

 government routes there is a short stretch of macadam road (1 to 20 miles) 

 in five marginal counties, of which, however, Boyd County alone lies 

 strictly within the mountain region. The coal company at Jenkins has 

 surveyed and built six miles of well-graded dirt road connecting Jenkins 

 and McRoberts. Owing to the enforcement of the road laws in Knott 

 County, a fairly good ungraded dirt road extends thirty miles between 

 Hazard and Hindman. Immediately west of Pine Mountain in Leslie 

 County, no wagon roads were attempted till 1890, and few exist, now. 



Before the advent of railroads, highway improvements were negligible, 

 but the past twenty years have seen progress. Numerous stretches of road, 

 eight to ten miles in length, afford somewhat fair transportation for 

 wagons to the railroads. Where the development of coal and timber has 

 increased the wealth of the community greatly, substantial bridges have 

 been built. Progress has been slowest in the rugged, extreme southeastern 



