People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1894 — Gravel Roads---Description. [ARTICLE]

Gravel Roads---Description.

The petitioners ask to improve the old roads in Marion township. Two of these roads, the “College” and “Long Ridge” are traveled on the surveyed line or corrected by agreement. On the way from the Poor Farm to Pleasant Ridge, the travel does not conform exactly to the surveyed section line west, or the half section line east of Rensselaer. The impi’ovement asked for, gives a better road bed and does not change the location. Concessions and private agreements, and other means of shortening the route are kindly recommended. If the owners of adjoining lands cannot agree to conform to the survey line, the center of the new grade must follow the center of the actual highway. The viewers recommended a highway 60 feet in width as providing proper room for ditches and berme, The “College” and “Long Ridge” roads are that wide, while the “Poor Farm” and “Pleasant Ridge” roads as fenced, are in some parts not so wide. Unless the land owners consent to widen it, the new grade must be placed to the best advantage in the actual highway. This is not in any sense a proceeding to make new highways, but to improve and straighten the old ones as near to the shortest survey lines as the land owners will permit. * *