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Show mm AND MAINTENANCE CF OUR EARTH ROADS If you look at the ordinary country road after a showt-r you will see small puddles along the wheel ruts and sometimes some-times larger pools. This water stays on the road surface because it eanno drain away into the side ditches. If you look closely you will see side diich e3 which have grown up with bushes and weeds in many cases, and whu h are so far from the traveled part of the road that the rain water does not drain into them. That part of the roadway where the wagons travel is called the traveled way. To prevent water from standing on the traveled way the road should be raided in the center and should slope gently into broad s'nalkw ditjhes. It is then raid to hae a ciown, If it is ten foet from the center of the road to the side ditcv, the surface at. the side ditch should be at least ten inche3 lower than it is at the center where the horses travel. The road then has a ten-inch crown. The rain that falls on a road prope.lv crowned will run quickly to the side and not soak into the surface or form pools. The side ditches for surface water should run parallel to the right of way, and should be open at every low point so that the wat r can run out of them into neighboring brooks or Btreams. If tie ditches merely collect the water from the road surface and it cannot run away, large pools will be formed along the roads'de, which will gradually foak into the soil beneath the road and make it so soft that the wheels of wagons will cut through the j road surface and soon destroy it. I Sometimes water runs from land a-I a-I long the road into the road and forms a j little stream down the wheel tracks or ! in the middle where the horses travel, j When driveways into farm yards are j built across the side ditchts t'r,ey fre-q fre-q intly form channels for water fr m i the farm yard to run into ti e road, j Tho pip s under driveways beeome j filed .vth leaves or rubbish and water ' can no longer run away. If the drive-I drive-I ways that stop the ditcb water were rebuilt so that no pipes were necessary , and the Citvih could be left open, much trouble from surface water would be stopf ed. Sometimes a road runs across low-ground low-ground or through a swamp where the road cannot be drained by side ditches alone. If the road were built higher like a railroad embankment across such ' I low land tnd made with a crown, it would be dry and hard. Sometimes a road passes through what is cfed a cut. This is a place where the earth ha been du out so that the road can go over a hill without being too steep. The water which always flows quietly under the ground on hill sides is known as ground water. In road cuts such water sometimes makes the road very muddy, and the road then needs what road builders call underdrainage. A good kind of underdrainage is a trench to go along under the side drain and a-bout a-bout three feet deep and a foot and a j half wide. In this trench a pipe Is laid near the bottom and covered with loose stones no bigger than an egg. When the trench is completely filled with loose stones the ground water, instead in-stead of soaking into the roadway, will stop among the stones and flow down the hill through the pipe. To keep a road smooth and crowned the best method is to drag it with a road drag. A road drag is made easily with two halves of a log which has been split. The log should be about 6 or 8 inches in thickness and about 6 or j 8 feet long. The two halves of the log I are set 3 feet apart with the smooch I faces forward and upright. They are 1 then fastened together with braces set ! in holes bored through the log. A pair : of horses may be used to drag the road j and are hitched to a chain fastened to : the front half of the log. The road ! .Irag should move forward so that it slants acrossJ.he road in such a way that a small amount of earth will slide past the smooth face of the log toward the" center of the road, thus forming the crown. The edges of the logs will smooth out the ruts. The best way to drag is to begin at the side ditches and go up one side ot the road, and then down the other. In the next trip the drag should be started a little nearer the center and the last trip over the road the drag m?y work close to the ctnter itself. Small ric'ges of earth will be thrown in the ho:se tnuk ar.d smeared by the round side of the log smoothly over the road. The smearing of the earth by the drag is called "puddling" and it tends to make the surface of the road smooth and wa'ertight after the sun comes out. The road is always dragged after it has rained and not when it is dry. A good, strong pair of horses with a well-built drag can drag about 3 or 4 i miles of road in a day, and it is the best way to maintain good roads. In every county some farmer along each 4 miles of road should own a drag and j drag the road when it rains. He would al ways find the road in good condition con-dition when he goes to market. Owing to the fact that many rural ! schools w-ere closed (at the time the! prize maintenance essay was announc- j ed by Director Logan Waller Page of the Office of Public Roads, it has been decided to extend the limit for receiv- j ing the essays to October 15, 1913. In ! addition to the gold medal given as ; first piize, two silver medals will be' given as second prizes. If a child who has submitted one essay previous to the issue of this notice should care to try again, he is at liberty to do so, but I he must be a pupil of a rural school, j There is some misunderstanding in re-; gard to the subje.t of the essay. The i idea is to set the children thinking how ! to better their earth roads with the ma- terial they have at hand. |