For most of the country, the spring thaw means the onset of pothole season. As the earth beneath our streets and roads thaws out and expands, today\u2019s most common paving materials, asphalt paving contractor<\/strong><\/a> and concrete, can be susceptible to heaving and cracking. When that happens your daily commute can feel more like a giant game of Whack-a-Mole as you pound over potholes and challenge your suspension crossing speed bumps where there were no speed bumps before.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it\u2019s helpful to reflect back on where we came from to appreciate what we have now. Our potholes are a real inconvenience but not so much that they stop commerce. Semis can still bring food from the farms, stock big box stores with all kinds of stuff, and beer trucks can still stock your favorite pub. But if you look at, say, Northern Virginia in the 19th<\/sup> century you\u2019ll see how road conditions-controlled commerce and even lengthened the Civil War.<\/p>\n
In the early 1800s most roads in Virginia were dirt paths. When it rained, they became a sea of mud churned up and rutted by horses and carts. In the dry season traffic would kick up choking clouds of dust. In short, the roads sucked. But this is America and when there is a need there is always somebody willing to fill the need\u2026for a buck. Toll road companies sprang up and were the first to provide \u201cartificial\u201d roads between points of commerce. An artificial road was considered to be any road that had a covering material.<\/p>\n
The Manchester Pike near Richmond was the first to gravel its road. The gravel toll road was significantly more efficient than competitors relying only on dirt but it was expensive, labor intensive, and required constant replenishing. On the other hand, traffic could continue to move in the rain and there were far fewer wagons getting stuck or breaking axels.<\/p>\n
And then along came Macadam. John Loudon McAdam, a Scottish born engineer was the first to put forward the theory that the soil could generally bear the weight of traffic by itself if it remained dry. Paving materials served to provide smoother, faster, traffic and protect the soil by providing a barrier from rain, ice, and snow. He developed design specifications that would later become the basis for tar and chip roads that we find in rural areas today.<\/p>\n
Macadam roads required three layers of different sized stone\/gravel resulting in a \u201cpavement that was 7\u201d to 10\u201d thick. The first layer would be of the largest stone \u201ccast on with a shovel to a depth of six inches, after the manner of sowing grain<\/em>\u201d and then rolled with a cart or wagon until the layer was firmly compacted. The second, thinner layer of smaller gravel would be added and rolled followed by the \u201croad surface\u201d of the finest gravel or sand which was raked and then rolled. The Lynchburg-Salem Turnpike was the first to have sections of Macadamized road followed by the Valley Turnpike between Salem and Seven Mile Fork. Macadamized toll roads were state-of-the-art for the time and were instrumental in expanding trade in Northern Virginia.<\/p>\n
And then there were the plank roads, an import from our neighbors in Canada. Plank or \u201ccorduroy\u201d roads consisted of a dirt path about eight feet wide covered by small logs placed side by side. Much of Virginia was heavily timbered so building these roads was less expensive because the materials didn\u2019t have to be imported from a quarry.<\/p>