ROAD BUILDING IN CLARK CO.

By WM. C. THOMA, Neillsville, Wis., Road Commissioner for Clark County

W. C. Thoma, County Road Commissioner.

Who has done a lot during the past four years to pull Clark County out of the mud. 

Note the pictures of good roads in this book.

                William Thoma's Crew at Work on Road Between Granton and Lynn.

One of the features of Clark County is its good roads. Travelers from other parts of the state and of the country— especially automobile tourists— admit when they come into this “Heart of Wisconsin” that in the matter of good thoroughfares we are well in the lead.

During the past four years the county has been working under the new system of state aid for road making, the county board having adopted that system in November, 1911. Work commenced the next spring. During 1912 and 1913 only grading and building of culverts was undertaken, but in 1914 and 1915 nearly a score of miles of surfaced roads have been made and the prejudice which at first existed against the new plan has gradually disappeared as the residents and tax payers learn from actual experience the benefit of the scientifically built highways.

During the three years eighty-five miles of roadway has been graded and there has been fifteen miles of gravel macadam and two miles of stone macadam and quite a stretch of shale macadam road made; 146 concrete culverts made and thirty- three concrete bridges, at an approximate expenditure of $100,000, of which the state pays one third, the county one third, and the town one third.

A system of state roads has been laid out which when. completed, five or ten years from now, will comprise about 400 miles of macadam road with thirty-three bridges and altogether representing a cost of half a million dollars. This state road system is about fifteen per cent of the whole system of roadways in the county, there being over two thousand miles of road in Clark County, an average of sixty miles in each township.

But it is not for the joy rider by any means that the good road movement is being pushed forward, but for new settlers as well. Roads are being cut through the brush and timber in the newer towns at the rate of five to ten miles a year, In each township and whenever a. newcomer settles down on a forty or eighty of land and shows his determination to stay and make a home, the town board will quickly and gladly give him a good highway to the nearest county road.

The roads are maintained by the towns and county, the automobile license money being appropriated for that purpose. Frequent dragging is the best and cheapest and easiest way to keep up roads when, once used and in Clark County this humble machine is used extensively.