LESSON 48 
Country Roap SYSTEMS 
HIS lesson is intended to raise certain questions with 
regard to the layout of country road systems. It 
is hardly possible in the short space of an elemen- 
tary chapter to answer these questions. Indeed 
we may doubt whether they have ever been fi- 
nally answered. It certainly is dangerous to 
dogmatize regarding these matters. 
Illustrations 
Figure 113 shows the road system ina small section of Franklin 
County, Mass., where the land is very hilly, almost mountainous. 
Figure 112 shows a similar area in Barnes and Cass Counties, 
North Dakota. It will be seen at once that this second plan 
covers an area in which the roads are laid on section lines of the 
original government survey. In the other illustration the road 
system grew up under use. 
Discussion 
The general road plan however is a matter of the greatest im- 
portance to everyone who lives in the country, and even to those 
who live in the city and drive through the country. Where such 
radical differences exist as those shown between these two plans 
the question very naturally arises whether one system is better 
than the other. Careful students of the subject generally consider 
that the lattice-work system provided by the government survey 
and shown in Figure 112 is defective and less satisfactory than the 
natural web of roads which grows up in response to definite local 
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