Rambling BackRoads

[3930dave]

All the land in this area was homesteaded in the 1880's & 1890's. The property abutting me on the north is said to have been homesteaded by a family with four or five sons. There are literally miles of rock walls from clearing the fields. Makes my entire body ache when I see those walls.

Rode a stoneboat in the Spring many years ago - anybody who builds with rock impresses the **** out of me.

My neigbour (in his 80's now, but is still a very imposing man) told me a story of building a cottage with his lineman buddies back when - all big strong guys, but when they started into working with the natural rock (lots of granite) on site, it brought them to their knees pretty quick. His description of the older stone-masons they tracked down in the area reminded me of my uncles - maybe only 5'7" or so, and at first glance didn't appear that big or strong..... but, bone + muscle = 100% of body mass, and could walk around one-handing stone all-day like it was a 5 pin bowling ball, w/o breaking a sweat....

Rgds, D.

 

[mapper]

All the land in this area was homesteaded in the 1880's & 1890's. The property abutting me on the north is said to have been homesteaded by a family with four or five sons. There are literally miles of rock walls from clearing the fields. Makes my entire body ache when I see those walls.

I have built a few modest rock walls around my place both dry layed and with mortar, what always amazed me was how many rocks it takes.:sweatdrop::tired: The most recent one I had my tractor with loader, it is impressive how many 1 man rocks one big rock in the loader can equal!

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Speaking of Rambling roads, we spent a week in Myrtle Beach, SC a couple years ago. Drove from Charleston, stayed in Myrtle Beach, with some excursions as far as Calabash. Now being raised in Oklahoma, where 99% of the roads are laid out on the square mile, North and South, I was a nervous wreck trying to drive in South Carolina. Beautiful country, but I think the roads there followed old Indian foot paths, or game trails, or stream beds or such. If it wasn't for the GPS on the wife's cell phone, I would still be driving around out in the boonies looking for daylight. I also enjoyed the people; friendly to a fault.
Some guy asked me where we were staying; I told him I didn't know the name of it, but it was on a golf course. He said, "Well that helps a lot".

 

[3930dave]

It can be interesting to know the history of a road. A buddy of mine does a lot of HVAC work in the Greater Toronto area.

He was on a site the better part of a week, and got talking with one of the local old timers about why this major road that headed SW out of the city looked like all the surveyors had been drunk all the time....

Turns out, we had to get cannons down to the border (think it was something like 1812 ).... it was pretty rough country back when...... couldn't even get horse teams through some spots, so cannons had to be dragged along in many places manually. Naturally, they took the "easiest" path, which usually wasn't straight...

We are a young country, but some of those roads have been there way longer than cars....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Dropped by here today because of this article....,,

Dream job: ‘My 9-to-5 is a US road trip’ - BBC News

Not many of us get to combine travel/work that well....... his points toward the end remind me of a good friend of mine.....

Rgds, D.

 

[cqaigy2]

It can be interesting to know the history of a road. A buddy of mine does a lot of HVAC work in the Greater Toronto area.

He was on a site the better part of a week, and got talking with one of the local old timers about why this major road that headed SW out of the city looked like all the surveyors had been drunk all the time....

Turns out, we had to get cannons down to the border (think it was something like 1812 ).... it was pretty rough country back when...... couldn't even get horse teams through some spots, so cannons had to be dragged along in many places manually. Naturally, they took the "easiest" path, which usually wasn't straight...

We are a young country, but some of those roads have been there way longer than cars....

Rgds, D.

Yep, that would have been the British responding to the invasion of by the USA. That didn't go so well for us.

Not really a road anymore, but was up hiking in the Cascades in north central Washington state and found what looked to be a narrow road or very wide path running along just below a ridge line. It was up in the middle of no where and ran for a few miles till petering out. A buddy of mine was going to college at the time and i was talking to him and a teacher at the college, about this "path" and the location and teacher became very interested in and asked about more specific details of the location. I told him as best i could remember of crude bearing of peaks. According to this teacher, some smallish brass canon had been found up in the same area. Too heavy to move by the people that had found them, so they had been left there, he said they were very old. He asked me who did i think had left the canon, i said probably the British and he said nope. I couldn't guess, he said they had been brought there by the Spanish. I can't remember any particulars about the specific Spaniards he had mentioned.

 

[3930dave]

Sometimes elements of civil engineering are way older than you'd think at first.

I haven't been to the UK yet, but what blows my mind is that some of the works built by the Romans are still standing ! Given how fast modern roads and bridges fall apart here, I find that amazing.

Rgds, D.

 

[Jstpssng]

The roads were built a lot differently back then, they used a lot of stone. Look at some of our old RR beds and the granite culverts which were put in. The rails may have been gone for decades but the road bed still stands. I got onto an old RR bed up in the North Maine Woods once that hadn''t been used in years; yet I was able to fly down it in my pickup. I must confess that my passenger got a little nervous, worrying about a moose stepping out in front of us.... my biggest concern was a tree across the road.

 

[/pine]

A contemporary problem with old outdated maps and plats is they are often used by entities like Google maps etc., etc...

Many old roads are no longer passable as shown on old maps because land use and ownership changes...

In the same respect people buy property on roads they know dead end at farm etc...not realizing that many years ago the (dead end) road used to be a well traveled shortcut or even a primary road connecting points beyond in either direction...

 

[3930dave]

A lot of those older works were done with a Do it Right, Once mindset. More engineering driven, than bean-counted to (an early) death....

Saw a clip recently of an historic lift-bridge in operation, Thames, London UK....... Used often, it is still running on the ORIGINAL bearings.

Progress ???

Rgds, D.