Country Roads.

For most Americans in 1815 the only means of overland travel from farm to market, mill, and store were rural roads, many developed from Indian trails and farmers' tracks. Chronically muddy and filled with stumps and boulders, the nation's country roads were nonetheless crucial to farmers and the national economy they supported. Country roads were, by Anglo-Saxon tradition, the responsibility of the county, and every year farmers congregated during slow times to work off their county "road taxes" by repairing or constructing local roads. Because county-road supervisors rarely possessed engineering skills, and because the work crews were less than highly motivated, rural roads in America remained almost uniformly poor even into the early twentieth century. Yet farmers did not worry over much. Except when moving or heading to market, they rarely traveled, and rather than pay higher taxes or contribute more...