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Show CARLTON WRITES ON ADVANTAGES OF OIL GRAVEL MIX ROADS Riverside, Calif. April 25, 1931 Editor.- Since coming down here I have been spending sometime investigating in-vestigating good roads, some not so good, the methods, costs, maintenance, mainten-ance, durability and adaptability and I find some amazing things, some of which are or should be of interest to Beaver County and Utah as a whole. In my investigations I have had the assistance of the State Road department. Especially am I Indebted In-debted to W. V. Darling, State Superintendent Sup-erintendent of maintenance. I rode with him hundreds of miles while he attended to his duties and he explained ex-plained methods and results as we went along. Before preceeding with my remarks re-marks I am going to pause and throw a good sized boquet at myself. In 1909 while a member of the Board of County Commissioners here and in charge of road construction, (they are called supervisors in California), Cali-fornia), I macadamized a section for east eighth street that year which has carried all the heavy traffic entering en-tering Riverside from the east up to the present time and has never had a dollar's worth of repairs done on it since it was built. Without a doubt over 100 times as many tons go over it as goes over any road in Beaver County. It is what is known here as a water bound macadam construction construc-tion with a very thin coat of heavy oil put on hot, and fine gravel scat-Continued scat-Continued on back page) CARLTON WRITES ON OIL GRAVEL MIX ROADS (Continued from page one) tered on while the oil is soft. It has been re-oiled two or, three times since it was finished. There is no reason why the road will not last indefinitely in-definitely if kept oiled. The county surveyor informs me that it has cost less than any other piece of road built in the county either befjre or since. Now to get back to, what I started to remark. The best, most satisfactory satisfac-tory and most economical roads now being constructed, where money is unlimited, is a concrete base. Beaver County can hardly be considered in that class so pass it up, but where money is scarce and dollars far between, be-tween, the oil gravel mix is making the best showing. Still another method me-thod costing even less is worth considering, con-sidering, tho not a satisfactory road, has been used to some extent in desert de-sert localities, and the cost amply justified, by preparing of a solid bed for oil gravel mix to be applied , lated. The road bed is shaped up the easiest way possible then a road drag is run over it two or three times a month and the action of the wind takes out the dust and fine sand and soon leaves a coating of small pebbles peb-bles and stones which in a short time makes quite an improved roadbed. There are stretches ,here in this county of 50 and 7 5 miles where this method was used, however they soon develop the washboard effect and have to be oiled, but the money was well spent provided the road was r properly located and in passing it is . well to remark now that the early locating lo-cating of a road is of vast importance. import-ance. Another thing, be sure all curves are properly elevated, that , alone makes a road much safer and faster. One of the worst, most dangerous dang-erous things about the old Beaver, Cove Fort crooked road was the fact that the curves were not elevated or banked at all, some of them were T much lower on the outside than on the iuside of the curve making it , almost impossible to make some of the turns at five miles an hour. ) ; Now we come . to the oil-gravel i road. The result is very much the . same as in Beaver County, but their methhod is much different in that . here they use most any old soil, dirt, . gravel, anything but adobe and they don't haul on a lot of new material j when they want to oil. In a road like from Beaver, to Milford not a . single load of new material would be needed, just take one of the heavy scarifiers and tear up the road bed to the debth of 3 to 5 inches and apply the oil and mix with scarifier, grader or disc from two and a half to three and a half gallons of heavy hot oil are used the yard. A great deal , of pains are taken to keep the soft iroad material smooth by many float-j float-j ings while being packed by the traf- tic. I was shown a piece of road which was put down, last fall in the irain and another which was finished in a snow storm. These were on the i"Rim of the World" highway at an 'elevation of from 5500 to 7000 in tho San Bernardino Nits. While they 'were not exactly failures they were far from satisfactory, but the superintendent super-intendent said all they would have to do would be to break it up some hot day and re-grade it. He said that any road which had been graveled like the Beaver-Milford road would be ideal to work up and oil. Another thing he brought out was the fact that it had not been entirely satisfactory satis-factory to contract oil-gravel jobs, but was better to have the work done under a competent foreman with proper supervision so that as condition condi-tion change? the amount of oil could be increased or diminished as needed. need-ed. Karl S. Carlton 1 |