PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS* CONVENTION. 



235 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ROADS. 



To the State Horticultural Convention: 



Gentlemen: Your committee to whom was referred the subject of good roads beg 

 leave to report as follows : 



The advance of human knowledge is made possible only because each generation of 

 men records the results of its investigation for the use of succeeding ones. These in 

 turn endeavor to determine what truth appears to be clearly established, and then pro- 

 ceed to push farther on into the unknown, leaving for their successors an increased 

 store of ascertained facts and deductions. In this way only has been made possible the 

 wonderful achievements of the present age in all lines of human knowledge. 



Therefore, your committee conceives that it will be doing a service by classifying 

 and summing up the very generally conceded truths regarding road-building up to the 

 present time. 



A rough classification of country roads may be made as follows: 



1st. Main trunk lines of travel leading toward principal centers of population. 



2d. Cross lines — connecting the main lines. 



3d. Roads in sparsely settled valley districts. 



4th. Mountain roads usually main lines. 



In the interest of economy and of the efficiency of the whole system of public high- 

 ways, the methods of construction should be proportioned to the amount of travel 

 which the road is to sustain. 



To illustrate: When a city begins to macadamize its streets, usually the travel into 

 and out of town, and nearly all of the traffic of several streets on either side of its first 

 macadamized street, concentrates upon the newly paved roadway, as upon H street in 

 •Sacramento, two years ago. Thus was thrust upon this road several times the traffic 

 which it must carry after other parallel streets near by are improved. This caused a 

 very rapid wear, especially in the middle of the street, so that when last season this was 

 coated with oil, it was too flat to drain well, and while a perfect surface was maintained 

 all summer and for a month after rains began, during the long-continued wet weather 

 of last winter, and with very heavy traffic, the surface softened up, and now is again 

 wearing badly, whereas a cross street, Ninth from H street north, treated in the same 

 way a year earlier, has yet an absolutely perfect surface, having suffered no perceptible 

 wear in those three years. 



No country road in California, even in the most thickly settled district, is subject to 

 s uch heavy traffic as is such a street of a city— even outside of the principal wholesale 

 and retail section. 



The' general method of road building is the same for all roads. It is so universally 

 conceded that it may be regarded as axiomatic. 

 1st, The roadbed should be well drained. 



2d. During construction it should be thoroughly packed, the harder the better. 

 3d. It should be moderately rounded or crowned. 



4th. It should be surfaced with some material which will leave every square yard 

 like every other square yard — in wearing quality. 



5th. The thickness of this surfacing material, when different from the material com- 

 posing the substructure, should be proportioned to the travel which the road is expected 

 to carry. 



6th. When this surfacing material, placed upon a well-compacted, hard surface 

 beneath it, has been well beaten together and thoroughly consolidated by travel, upon 

 this hard surface should be spread a thin coating of oil, which should be given a week 

 or two in which to penetrate the hard surface of the road, keeping travel off of it during 

 this period by oiling but half of the roadway at a time, with sufficient barriers so placed 

 as to make travel upon the freshly oiled surface quite impossible. 



An alternative method for the application of oil is to place it upon the rounded, well- 

 compacted surface of the substructure of the roadway and then apply sufficient fine 

 gravel, macadam, or disintegrated granite, to form a hard, waterproof surface when 

 well compacted by travel. One or the other of these methods may be chosen, according 

 to local conditions. 



