I94



Prairie Public

 

 

Changes in Roadway Design

As automobiles gained in popularity so did the need and demand for improved roads.  When A. L. Westgard was undertaking his path-finding trip in 1912 along what would become the Red Trail, there were approximately 8,000 vehicles registered in the United States; at the end of the decade there were approximately 90,000.  Until the 1917 creation of a State Highway Commission authorized to accept and expend matching funds provided to the states through the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, North Dakota’s road-building and maintenance were the responsibility of its counties and townships. 

Some stretches of improved roads existed in the state – between 1913 and 1914 the Burleigh County Commission contracted for $23,000 of work on the Red Trail done according to plans and specifications of the county engineer. Grades were improved and reinforced concrete bridges and culverts installed. While such work resulted in substantial improvements over the two-track prairie trail that served as much of the state’s road system, the improved road was still a dirt road.  In the words of the North Dakota State Highway Department:

A smooth road allowing high speed was not considered a necessity, although by 1918 the automobile was in common use in the state and was no longer a toy of the prosperous.  Rains that muddied roads and made them impassable for a time were nearly always welcomed by North Dakotans in their agricultural state’s economy.  If rains forced a halt to transportation for a few days, that was just considered a temporary problem in man’s interaction with nature.  All-weather roads were regarded as luxuries.  Ruts, chuckholes, dust and narrow bridges were common and were simply facts of driving that had to be accepted.  Occasional maintenance by a horse-drawn blade improved conditions temporarily, but the state roads were essentially trails with no ditches or very shallow ones and a few miles of gravel surfacing.  In many instances the road was even lower than the surrounding land because the unprotected dirt eroded and blew away.  During dry weather, the dirt roads were thick with choking dust churned up by traffic; during wet weather, they were linear bogs of sticky clay.

Road building around 1915 was described by the highway commission’s construction engineer as being “by the use of slip and wheel scrapers which filled only the low spots, or else left the roadway in worse condition than before the road was ‘improved‘.” But by the end of the decade advances in road construction were being made, in part due to minimum design requirements imposed by the federal government for roads built using federal monies.  The following description of a stretch of road in Stutsman County built in 1921 characterizes the road building efforts of the day, and the excitement with which they were greeted.

The entire road . . . is built with a 24 foot crown, as are all government highways, and the curves are carefully graded, making the road a veritable speedway . . . painted guard rails have been placed along the sides of the road whenever the grade is high to protect the autoist from a possible accident . . . Careful provision has been made for the drainage of the road, the grade of the ditches along the sides of the highway as carefully made as the grade of the roadbed.  Culverts have been placed along the road wherever needed, the ends being reinforced with concrete abutments.  None of these steel culverts are less than 18 inches in diameter.

By the late 1920s bituminous surface treatments were being introduced on the state’s roads to inhibit dust, resist moisture, and provide a smoother driving surface.  Tar and oil were first used in North Dakota in 1927, including along sections of U. S. Highway 10 at Casselton and Valley City, to create dust-free, moisture-shedding road surfaces.  The types of treatment varied depending on the nature of the soils.  In the Red River Valley, heavy oil was first applied to the heavy clay sub-grade and allowed to penetrate it as a method of  “waterproofing.”  A second application of oil was then covered with sand and gravel.  Subsequent oil/sand/gravel applications would be made in following years.  Where sub-grades were of better drained soils the technique was to lay the gravel atop the road surface and then cover it with asphaltic oils. The oil was then covered with a light coat of gravel.  A third technique, which also required well-drained soils to be effective, was to lay gravel on a loose road base, cover it with oil, and then mix it using discs, harrows and blade graders.  Once thoroughly mixed it was spread over the road bed and traffic allowed to compact it.  These techniques resulted in roads that often looked like sheet asphalt pavements of the day.  Unlike sheet asphalt pavements which required a concrete base, they were limited in their ability to support heavy loads.  As a consequence, for decades to come load limits were imposed on the state’s roads in the springtime to preserve their integrity.  This was both an inconvenience and an inhibitor of commerce over the state’s roads and highways.

For the state’s heaviest traveled roads -- those carrying at least 800 vehicles per day -- the technique on well-drained soils was to place a four-inch layer of packed gravel base atop the soil and then a two-inch layer of mixed oil and gravel atop the base.  The cost of such a road in 1929 was approximately $4,000/mile. At the same time widths of those roads carrying the heaviest traffic were increased from 24 to 36 feet. By the end of the 1938 construction season, the entire length of U.S. Highway 10 in North Dakota was covered with an oil mix surface or better.