Everything about Plank Road totally explained
A
plank road or
puncheon is a dirt path or
road covered with a series of
planks, similar to the wooden sidewalks one would see in a
Western movie. Plank roads were wildly popular in the
U.S. Northeast and
U.S. Midwest in the first half of the
19th century. They were often built by
turnpike companies.
Plank road boom
In the late 1840s plank roads inspired an investment boom (and bust). The very first plank road was in North Syracuse, NY in order to transport salt and other goods. . Unlike the often compared
tulip bubble, the plank road boom had more in common with the
Dot-com bubble: a new technology that promised to transform the way people lived and worked, permissive changes in legislation seeking to spur development, lots of investment by regular people, etc. Ultimately the technology failed to live up to its reputation and millions of dollars in investments evaporated almost overnight.
Plank roads in Australia
In
Perth, Western Australia, plank roads were important in the early growth of the agricultural and outer urban areas, given the distances imposed by swamps and relatively infertile soil. As it cost UK£2,000 per kilometre to construct roads by conventional means, the local councils (known as road boards) were experimenting with cheaper approaches to road building. A method called Jandakot
Corduroy had been developed at
Jandakot south-east of Perth, where a
jarrah tramway laid upon 2.3 m-long
sleepers, bounded by two 70 cm-wide strips of jarrah planks for cart and carriage wheels. The 90 cm gap was filled with limestone rubble to be used by horses. This reduced the cost of road building by up to 85% after their widespread introduction in 1908. However, increased traffic and suburban development rendered these routes unsatisfactory over time and by the 1950s they'd been replaced with
bitumen surfaced roads.
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