Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1896 — That Three Miles of Bad Road, [ARTICLE]

That Three Miles of Bad Road,

There are three and a quarter miles of road between Rensselaer and Remington which are cursed and grumbled about more than uther ten milCb of road in the county without' dohbt. Except for these three miles, there is a good gravel road, kept in good repair, all the way between the two towns. But these three miles are deep m mud in wet weather and deep in sand ih dry weather, and hilly and rutty and altogether execrable, at all times and seasons. This piece of road is truly a perennial bugbear, and how to make a good road of it is a puzzling question. The road is in Jordan township, but in a part of the township where hut comparatively few of the people of the township use it, and consequently where there is very little probability of the people of the township spending the several thousand dollars necessary to make it a good road. It ought to be graded and gravelled and made as good as the other gravel roads between the two towns.

But how is it to be made better? The road is a reproach to the whole county, but it is hardly to be expected that the county will be willing to shoulder the expense of bnilding a gravel road there. Bat surely there would, under the circumstances, be no impropriety in the commissioners paying some part of the cost of the road. As for the rest of the cost, we see no hope for its being forthcoming unless it be by a plan which we now offer for the consideration of the County Commissioners and of the people of Marion and Carpenter townships, including Rensselaei and Remington, and who are more directly concerned in this matter than any one else. Our suggestion briefly stated, is that the Commissioners add as much to what they have already expended on the road as they think the circumstance will justify. Then let them take off from Jordan township the twelve western most sections, and add them, half and half, to Marion and Carpenter townships, the north half of them to Marion and the south half to Carpenter. This would leave half of this bad three miles in Marion and half in Carpenter, or strictly speaking being a mile and a half in Carpenter and a mile and three quarters in Marion. The people of the two townships could then vote to improve the road, at their joint expense, under the township gravel road law. The cost to each of these two wealthy townships, and divided over a period of ten years, would be too little to be felt. And it should be remembered that the six sections of land to be added to each township will considerably add to the taxable property of each, and in that way materially reduce the cost of the road, to the present property owners of the townships. When the roads are once made they would become a part of the free gravel road system of the county and be maintained at county expense. The people living in these 16 sections of Jordan, would probably be glad to be cat off from Jordan, and the south half attached to Carpenter and the north, half to Marion for they aie remote from the main part of Jordan, and naturally go to Remington and Rensselaer as their trading points, and would be glad to go there to do their voting and other township business. The change would also give them a good road all the way to Rensselaer and Remington at practically no cost to themselves.