Reminiscences of Roadbuilding 

Photos of Ironton, Ohio Tunnel and SR 93

Marietta Daily Leader, 05 Apr 1901, Fri, Page 6 A most exciting communication has been written to the Ironton Register by Mr. George T. Walton, now of Burden, Kansas, but formerly a resident of Lawrence County. He writes about early road building in Lawrence County, [Ohio]. As the subject of good roads is now one of the uppermost topics of discussion in our county of Washington, it seems appropriate to reproduce Mr. Waltons‘ article.

He writes as follows: From the number of letters I have received since the writing of the “genesis” of Ironton, it occurs to me that the Register family takes an interest in the early history of Lawrence County. Since I left Ironton in February 1866, I have learned that the Good Roads Idea has permeated every township in the county until now. Is it no uncommon feat for a man in Arabia to take his Dulcinea in a buggy (perhaps barouche is a better word)? Traveling behind a pair of 2:10 bayside? Away to Ironton, get married and a fine dinner, and back home in time to commence housekeeping in their home cottage on the hill, all in one day.

Good Roads Idea

The Good Roads Idea was as unpopular in Lawrence County as the anti-slavery sentiment in the early days. It would be amusing, if not flattering to the children and grandchildren, to hear the grave and wise (or otherwise) objections raised by otherwise level-headed men sixty years ago. The most significant complaint was to having a road up the creek bottoms and using up good bottom level land, when by going over a hill or two of 30 or 40 degrees grade, and too rocky to be plowed, and only a little longer route, a good acre was to be saved.

But a beginning must be, so in the legislature elected in 1837, Clark of Lawrence, Bundy of Jackson, and Gregory of Scioto evolved the idea of a graded state road from the Guyandotte ferry (Proctorville) via Johns Creek, Bloom Furnace. In Scioto, Jackson Furnace to Jackson C. H., with John Bennett of Scioto, Luther Blodgett, and John Stewart of Lawrence, viewers, and Thomas Walton, surveyor, limited to an elevation of 6 degrees, or 1-foot lapse in 12. In the fall of 1838, we commenced at Quaker Bottom, viewers and surveyor present.

I was detailed to the level, George B. Shattuck, James King and Fred Stumbo, chain and axemen, and Gilbert Bennett, flagman. It may be attractive to my successor in the engineering department of Lawrence County to know what an original engineer’s outfit we had. Father had an old-fashioned 6-inch compass of a Jacob staff, ball, and socket variety. I had an old Jacob staff head to put my level on. The “Transit,” so-called, was homemade.

We had to send to Cincinnati for a bulb for the level, made an inch board into an acute angle of six degrees, and inserted the bulb in a hole in the angle and a hole in the bottom to set in the top of the Jacob staff. It was almost perfect, for we did not need it on the ground nearly level, as we did not note the length of bridges and culverts. No cuts and alls to mention just set our “transit” at the foot of a hill and sight over the top of our angle, and if it cleared the ground, all right, and if it dipped into the mountain, twist it till it would and drive a stake and not course and distance.

Old Gil Bennett

We had the whole male population with us, generally jolly but sometimes bellicose. On starting up a valley near one man’s cabin, he met me with his rifle and forbade my entrance. Nearly 70 years ago, Gil Bennett, with his hatchet raised, ordered the man to throw up his gun. Old Gil meant business, and the man saw it. I went on.

I will not give the man’s name because 25 years after presiding at a farmers’ club, the man called up the circumstances and apologized for the act. He would allow an excellent road to run through his garden and move his “ingun” beds out of its way. That wise old head, Sam Burk, was with us for several days. He could hardly believe his eyes to see how a G-degree grade would climb over Blodgett Hill.

When spinning along your passable roads, even men of this generation do not realize how much they owe to odd old Sam Burk and the Jackson Graded Road Survey. The road, as a whole, never worked. Some effort was made near the grade from Ohio to Wakefield’s and some on John’s Creek. Still, many men, such as the Vermillions, Sam Burk, John Stewart, the Russell, Rod Paul, and others, saw the possibilities of a grade, and when the time came, they were ready for good roads. Your present and future passable roads, in their first embryonic form, evolved in the Guyandotte and Jackson graded roads.

And those wild boys, the two Georges, Jim, and Fred-forty years later saw them as Trustee Dr. Shattuck, grave Judge Walton, and brave Captain King. In reading the Register, I know a family of Road Building by names that sixty or seventy years ago were not high in the list of moral, intellectual, or financial columns, now are well nigh at the top.

Little Red Schoolhouse

Why and how so? The bluegrass country of Kentucky is said to produce fast horses and men. Our iron hills of Lawrence make men of iron constitutions, iron nerves, iron wills, and ironclad do-and-dare-to-iveness. Besides being Buckeyes (one of nature’s best improvements of the Hybrid Anglo-Saxon race), we have had almost from the beginning, if not the “little red schoolhouse on the hill,” we have had the little log schoolhouse on the red hill. And most of our parents were so poor that they had to work us for all we were worth for nine months of the year, and our “quarter’s schooling” was a holiday looked forward to, and many improved it for all there was in it.

It is a patent fact that if a boy has a place to put education, he will hunger for it, as a boy does for his neighbor’s ripe watermelon and will have it if he uses up his nights and Sundays to obtain it. The men who planned the Ohio school laws little dreamed of the mighty engine they built. Do you realize three or four of the wisest Presidents of the United States were from the little log Buckeye school house, and an innumerable host of Senators, Representatives, Governors, and officers high and low of the great West were originally Buckeye school boys?