; . Ji 
ECONOMIC SURVEYS OF COUNTY HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT. 21 
and a total sale value after the roads were improved of $115,900, 
showing an average value per acre before improvement of $20.48 and 
an average value after improvement of $35.27, or a general average 
of 70.2 per cent increase in value. 
In order to ascertain whether or not the increase in land values 
was general throughout the county, or whether it was confined to the 
improved roads, we obtained in the fall of 1915 values of three 
typical farms on unimproved roads where the land was comparable in 
agricultural fertility with land on the improved roads. 
A farm in Livingston district, containing 1,000 acres, 12 miles 
- from an improved road, was sold at $7 per acre in 1914. 
Another farm in Livingston district, 10 miles from the improved 
road, containing 148 acres, was sold in 1915 for $9.45 per acre. 
A farm in Berkley district, 12 miles from the improved road, con- 
taining 190 acres, was sold in 1915 for $4.73 per acre. 
These three farms were stated by competent authorities to be 
typical of values on the unimproved roads, and if the average of $6.89 
per acre for the three farms is compared with the average of $35.27 
per acre for the sales on the improved roads, it seems reasonably con- 
clusive evidence that the roads have been a most important factor 
in the increase of farm values. 
On the whole, it appears that the land along the improved roads 
increased in value an average of about 70 per cent, due far more to 
the road improvement than to any other cause. 
Again, it was acertained from the dealers in real estate that very 
few farms had been sold in the county except those located on or 
near the improved roads and that the increase in land values was 
confined almost entirely to the improved road sections. Real estate 
dealers in Fredericksburg asserted that they had sold more farms 
on the improved roads during the single year 1911-12 than in all the 
rest of the county combined during the preceding five years. They 
stated further that prospective buyers had, in many cases, refused to 
look at farms located on unimproved roads. Considerable areas of 
farming land along the improved roads are now being cultivated for 
the first time since the Civil War. Several tracts of land which were - 
covered with forest growth or brush when the first inspection was 
made in 1910 have since been cleared and are now being cultivated. 
A series of photographs, taken of the same location each year since 
1910, illustrates this fact. (Pl. I, figs. 1-4.) 
EFFECT OCF ROAD IMPROVEMENT ON TRAFFIC DEVELOPMENT. 
: To obtain basic data covering the development of the agricultural 
and forest resources of the county and to aid in determining the effect 
of the road improvement on such development, a careful record of 
incoming and outgoing shipments of farm and forest products at 
