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Road Building:
Roman builders left detailed descriptions of their procedures. Why they built road surfaces 3 to 5 feet thick to serve a traffic consisting only of pedestrians, animals, chariots, and carts, can be explained only by the great number of workers became numerous and created a demand for smoother road surfaces. At the end of the century motor vehicles passed from the experimental to the utility stage. As their numbers increased, their owners became a powerful force for highway improvement. Development of the automobile and of road-building machinery brought about the greatest road-building period in history during the years following 1920.Road Materials.—Roads must be built of materials that will withstand the destructive forces of nature and of heavy loads carried by both slow and swiftly moving vehicles. They must resist the effects of rainfall, heat in summer, freezing and thawing in winter, and the pressure of wheels amounting to thousands of pounds. Highway engineers have made great progress in building roads to resist these forces, but there is no type of road that does not deteriorate with use and age. The materials used for road surface are:
The total thickness was 3 to 5 feet, and widths ranged up to 35 feet. It has been estimated that to build such a road in the United States would cost a half million dollars per mile. It has sometimes been alleged that lost secrets of the Romans could be used to great advantage in modern road building. This is not true. There was nothing secret about the Roman methods.
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