Corduroy road

Corduroy Road

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Corduroy road

A Corduroy road or log road is a type of road

Road

A road is an identifiable Road number, way or Trail between Location . Roads are typically smoothed, Pavement , or otherwise prepared to allow easy travel; though they need not be, and historically many roads were simply recognizable routes without any formal construction or Maintenance, repair and operations....
made by placing sand

Sand

Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles.As the term is used by geologists, sand particles range in diameter from 0.0625 to 2 millimeters....
-covered log

Log

Selfref|For Wikipedia's logs, see...
s perpendicular

Perpendicular

In geometry, two line or plane , are considered perpendicular to each other if they form congruence adjacent angles angles . The term may be used as a noun or adjective....
to the direction of the road over a low or swamp

Swamp

A swamp is a wetland featuring temporary or permanent inundation of large areas of land, by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a substantial number of hammock , or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation....
y area. The result is an improvement over impassable mud or dirt roads, yet is a bumpy ride in the best of conditions and a hazard to horse

Horse

The horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolution of the horse over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, odd-toed ungulate animal of today....
s due to loose logs that can roll and shift.

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A Corduroy road or log road is a type of road

Road

Sand

Log

Selfref|For Wikipedia's logs, see...
s perpendicular

Perpendicular

Swamp

Horse

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
times. It is known to have been used as early as 4,000 BC with examples found in Glastonbury, England. Compare the puncheon or plank road

Plank road

A plank road or puncheon is a dirt path or dirt road covered with a series of Boards, similar to the wooden sidewalks one would see in a Western movie....
, which uses hewn boards instead of logs, resulting in a smoother and safer surface.

Corduroy roads can also be built as a foundation for other surfacing. If the logs are buried in wet, acid

Acid

An acid is traditionally considered any chemical compound that, when dissolved in water, gives a solution with a hydrogen ion Activity greater than in pure water, i.e....
ic, anaerobic

Hypoxia (environmental)

Hypoxia or oxygen depletion is a phenomenon that occurs in aquatic environments as oxygen becomes reduced in concentration to a point detrimental to aquatic organisms living in the system....
soils such as peat

Peat

Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation biological tissue. Peat forms in wetlands or peatlands, variously called bogs, Moorland, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests....
or muskeg

Muskeg

Muskeg is an Soil pH type common in Arctic and boreal areas, although it is found in other northern climates as well. Muskeg is more-or-less synonymous with bogland but muskeg is the standard term in non-Atlantic Canada and Alaska ....
they decay very slowly. A few corduroy road foundations that date back to the early 20th century still exist in the United States. One example is the Alaska Highway

Alaska Highway

The Alaska Highway was constructed during World War II and connects the contiguous U.S. to Alaska through Canada. It runs from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, British Columbia to Delta Junction, Alaska, via Whitehorse, Yukon, Yukon....
between Burwash Landing and Koidern, Yukon

Yukon

Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada three Territories of Canada. It was named after the Yukon River, Yukon meaning "Great River" in Gwich?in language....
, which was rebuilt in 1943, less than a year after the original route was graded on thin soil and vegetation over permafrost

Permafrost

In geology, permafrost or permafrost soil is soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Ice is not always present, as may be in the case of nonporous bedrock, but it frequently occurs and it may be in amounts exceeding the potential hydraulic saturation of the ground material....
, by using corduroy, then building gravel road over top. During the 1980s, the gravel was itself covered with a chip-seal

Pavement (material)

Road surface or pavement is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain traffic . Such surfaces are frequently road surface marking....
. During the late 1990s, this corduroy-underlain road began to be replaced with modern road construction, including rerouting of the entire highway.

In a slang

Slang

Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language....
application, Corduroy Road can also apply to a road in ill repair, having many holes, discernible ruts, or surface swellings and one on which travel is unpleasant, or capable of harming the vehicle

Vehicle

Vehicles, derived from the Latin word, vehiculum, are non-living means of transport. Most often they are manufactured , although some other means of transport which are not made by humans also may be called vehicles; examples include icebergs and floating tree trunks....
s traveling on it.

Corduroy roads were used extensively in the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
in Sherman's March through the Carolinas and in World War II by both German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front

Eastern Front (World War II)

The Eastern Front of World War II was a Theatre between the German Reich and the Soviet Union which encompassed Central Europe and eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945....
. In the Pacific Northwest corduroy roads built of huge logs and without the sand covering were the mainstay of local logging practices and were known as skid

Skidder

A skidder is any type of heavy vehicle used in a logging operation for pulling cut timber out of a forest in a process called "skidding", in which the logs are transported from the cutting site to a landing....
roads. Two of these, respectively on the outskirts of the milltowns of Seattle and Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal city and major seaport located in the Lower Mainland of southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is the largest city in British Columbia and the second largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest region....
, which had become concentrations of bars and working man's slum, were the origin of the more widespread meaning of "skid road" and its derivative skid row

Skid row

A skid row or skid road is a run-down or dilapidated urban area with a large, impoverished population. The term originally referred literally to a path along which loggers skidded logs....
, referring to a poor area.

Corduroy road

See also

External links