Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/123

CHANGING CONDITIONS IN KENTUCKY 117 law is proving a failure in the mountains and is giving way to the old custom because the mountain county is too poor to pay the commis sioner's salary, and because the mountain man may pay the tax in work, a fact which introduces again the old problem of road-work enforce ment. Our venerable host at Booneville, formerly a judge, although deploring greatly the lack of education in his county, insisted that the most pressing need of his people is an outlet for their produce. "It used to be thirty miles to the railroad," he explained. "Now it is only ten. But the road leads over a mountain, and is full of chuck holes. In the spring time, when our heavy traffic must be carried on, the wheels sink axle-deep in the holes. If only we had an outlet to market." In 1904 the total expenditures upon the highways in a number of rugged mountain counties amounted to about $24 per mile. The aver- age expenditure for the state, much less rugged and therefore requiring relatively smaller expenditures, was, nevertheless, $43.57. The history of the mountain roads emphasizes the inability of the people to provide themselves with efficient highways, and manifests the great need for outside help, state or federal. In general, road material would have to be imported at great expense. The costs of roads steadily increase as the forest retreats towards the headwaters. In 1907 the United States Department of Public Roads as an object lesson built and macadamized in Johnson County, 5,780 feet of road, and constructed through Cumberland Gap, 12,300 feet of macadam pike, and graded 900 feet more, at a total cost of $7,050 per mile. This work demonstrates again that the construction of good highways in the mountain region, while possible, cannot be done without outside help. Besides the government routes there is a short stretch of macadam road (one to twenty miles) in five marginal counties, of which, however, Boyd County alone lies strictly within the mountain region. The coal com- pany at Jenkins has surveyed and built six miles of well-graded dirt road connecting Jenkins and McRoberts. Owing to the enforcement of the road laws in Knott County, a fairly good ungraded dirt road ex- tends thirty miles between Hazard and Hindman. Immediately west of Pine Mountain in Leslie County, no wagon roads were attempted till 1890, and few exist now. Before the advent of railroads, highway improvements were neg- ligible, but the past twenty years have seen progress. Numerous stretches of road, eight to ten miles in length, afford somewhat fair transportation for wagons to the railroads. Where the development of coal and timber has increased the wealth of the community greatly, sub- stantial bridges have been built. Progress has been slowest in the rugged, extreme southeastern section of the region, even though rail- roads have begun to penetrate. There the old-fashioned English saddle and the sleds drawn by oxen are still in use. Except for lumbering, the streams are used but little. The North.