cool photo from Kinsey, the logging photographer, of a plank road, a dump truck, a steam shovel, and a truck with TrublPruf tires

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/463/

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/05/steve-finds-darndest-things-trublpruf.html

Plank roads at Boeing!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10240141973070179&set=gm.1941486436432269&idorvanity=197491484165115

in 1718, king Charles XII of Sweden figured out how to get a dozen 30 ton (each) war galleys 25 KM overland, to launch in a secret attack on a Swedish port - something similar to a logging plank road

 ground penetrating radar project found these traces of log tracks used to stabilize the heavy loads, in the Blomsholm area of Sweden

Imagine the sheer amount of WORK it took horses and men, to lay out the log rollers, and hoists, blocks, and grease for 25 kilometers

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2025/01/archaeologists-discover-charles-xiis-secret-galarvegen/154251

I had no idea mat roads (plank roads) were still being used!

This is pretty cool, first I've seen that there was a book on the plank road in Imperial County California !

 

1916

 

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1265775182351388&set=pcb.3905131749617273

A 4,573-year-old neolithic wooden peat road in the Netherlands, excavated in the 1980s. The peat road was at least 800 metres long, and its construction has been precisely dated to the year 2,549 BC thanks to dendrochronology or tree-ring dating

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=779461014216093&set=a.554138156748381

someone found that a logging "fore and aft" plank road was left on a Canadian island, and is still there about 80 years after it was last used

 

https://www.facebook.com/EricBrightonNostalgia/photos/183991943996869

that plank road is bearing up under a heavy load

 https://www.facebook.com/EricBrightonNostalgia/photos/183993397330057

a Gramm-Bernstein logging truck on a plank road, with a big log on back

They were an automobile company in Lima, Ohio, an early manufacturer of power wagons and advertised 1, 2, 3, and 5 ton models with "any style of body desired". Vehicles were sold through the Willys-Overland Motors.

From 1930 to 1935, the Ahrens-Fox Fire Engine Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, had been building its smaller fire engines on chassis made by LeBlond-Schacht Truck Company, also of Cincinnati. But by 1935, Depression-weakened Ahrens-Fox owed Schacht so much money for chassis already supplied, that Schacht refused to supply any more truck chassis to AF. Ahrens-Fox the turned to Gramm Trucks of Lima, Ohio, to supply radiators, hoods, and fenders for its smaller fire trucks. Schacht Trucks bought-out Ahrens-Fox Company in 1936, and AF again began to build fire engines on Schacht chassis. But the Ahrens-Fox with Gramm sheet metal continued to be available until 1939.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Bernstein_Company

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159405316092055&set=pcb.1224902274757359

first photo I've seen that has a pole road AND a plank road, 1937

 https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/lumberjacks-british-columbia-history-1900-1930/

the Michigan plank road from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo also shows on the map that there was a plank road to Allegan, and while researching this, I learned there was another from Saginaw to Flint

By May of 1852 there were advertisements in the newspaper, “500 men wanted to build the plank road 12 ½ miles from Kalamazoo north, 19 miles from Grand Rapids south, and one bridge across the Kalamazoo River.”

 The road connected the two cities in 1854, and the trip could be made in one day. Eventually Hwy 131 would follow the same route starting down South Division through Wayland, Shelby, and Plainwell to Kalamazoo. 

The plank road and its toll stations were a profitable enterprise, and gave Grand Rapids access to additional farmers and new markets. Suddenly everything changed in 1870 when the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad opened. The old oak and pine planks were worn and warped; the rails were fast and smooth.

http://www.historygrandrapids.org/audio/2547/the-plank-road
 https://www.kpl.gov/local-history/kalamazoo-history/transportation/plank-roads/ 

Martin Michigan, which was named for President Martin Van Buren, had its beginning in 1836 when Mumford Eldred purchased forty acres of land and built his cabin in the township. Martin became part of the transportation link between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo in 1855 when a plank road was completed between the two cities.

The first settler in Plainwell was Henry Wellever, who was attracted to the area because of the construction of a new plank road.

In the early 1850s, the old rutted (and when it rained, muddy) dirt road between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, and between here and Allegan, was replaced by a new plank road. The sawn planks were made out of oak or walnut and were 8’ long and 2” thick. This pioneer version of a paved highway was a huge improvement ... having a relatively smooth surface that would not be impacted much by the weather.

When the plank road was completed in 1854, the result was a considerable amount of traffic and the area, simply referred to as “The Junction” at that time, started to grow into a town. The town was surveyed and platted in April 1863 and was given the name Plainwell. The plank road remained in operation until the early 1900’s, when the current paved 10th Street between Wayland and Plainwell, which uses the same roadbed, replaced it.

http://www.historygrandrapids.org/audio/2547/the-plank-road
https://www.wmuk.org/wmuk-news/2019-04-11/kalamazoo-plank-road-was-a-boon-to-travelers-but-a-bumpy-ride-for-investors

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Plainwell

In 1944 five-thousand POW’s (German and Italian soldiers taken prisoner during World War II) were sent to Michigan, 250 to Allegan County, to assist farmers during the 1944 harvest as most of the men were away fighting the war in Europe and in the Pacific. They were held at Camp Lakewood, which was a Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) camp built in 1936.

https://gis.allegancounty.org/portal_webadaptor/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=81e1d912b4c24b729a207dc9e8403ab9

a plank roadway that stretched from Saginaw to Flint began in 1851

Pamar Enterprises crew member Scott Patterson, of St. Clair moves a piece of wood plank road from the construction site where the 24 foot long road section was discovered 3.5-feet below the surface of E. Genesee.

 “This is a gold mine,” said Thomas B. Mudd, the Saginaw preservationist who is helping lead the city’s efforts to save the 159-year-old artifact. “This is much more sophisticated than anything I expected to find.

https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/2010/04/saginaw_crews_unearth_more_his.html

log road supporting a tractor pulling a train of supplies, the 41st infantry, in New Guinea

https://theamericanwarrior.com/tag/new-guinea/

'Expedient Roads' the military built in WW2 to get across problem terrain (thanks Billy O!)

plank road on an Alaskan island in 1938 (thanks Billy O!)

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plank_road#/media/Fichier:Puncheon.jpg

how about this... a plank road to the logging area so the trucks could get in and out

I bet no one has done this in the last 50 years

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/vintage-shots-from-days-gone-by-part-2.1154030/page-797#post-13805904

plank road

https://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5156036-Vintage-photos-Awesome!&p=75336551&viewfull=1#post75336551

a wood floor, instead of a road, from the side of the street to the opposite side

that must have been such an enormous improvement over muddy roads

I never heard of this before, a toll plank road from Memphis Tennessee to West Memphis Arkansas (thanks Steve!)

http://transpressnz.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-old-plank-road-between-memphis.html

This has me wondering what road it is, (Interstate 40? or Interstate 55) and while looking into that, came across the following info on early roads out of Memphis

The Memphis to Little Rock Road, also known as the Military Road (as were most of the early Arkansas roads constructed under the auspices of the U.S. Army), was authorized on January 31, 1824, when the U.S. Congress passed an act for construction of a road opposite Memphis, Tennessee, through the swamps of eastern Arkansas to the territorial capital of Arkansas at Little Rock (Pulaski County).

The superintendent of the Memphis to Little Rock (Interstate 40)  Road began in January 1826, with instructions to make a road “at least twenty four feet wide throughout” with all timber and brush removed and stumps cut as low as possible, marshes and swamps to be “causewayed with poles or split timber,” and ditches four feet wide and three feet deep to be dug on either side of the road

By the end of August, the remaining sections between the White River and Little Rock were completed, and Little Rock and Memphis were connected.

Though it was finished, the road faced harsh conditions, particularly in its eastern reaches, which were subject to severe flooding and were impassable for several months each year. In 1832, and 1834 it was improved, the latter year bringing about substantial improvement, when contractors were paid to construct an embankment “twenty four feet wide at the top, with suitable slopes, which shall be three feet above highest water” in the first four miles of the road, “creating a continuous levee, from the bank opposite Memphis to the highlands on the South Side of Grandee lake.”

The contractor used oxen and scrapers to create the embankment. Though the initial miles opposite Memphis proved difficult, twenty-three miles of the road were completed by November 1834

But construction of the Memphis to Little Rock Road opened an overland route between the Mississippi River and the state capital, the importance of which led the Gazette to observe: “We venture to assert that that there is no one single subject of so much importance to Arkansas as the having of good roads from the interior of the country, to the Mississippi river.”

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=7503#

But heading south from Memphis, is also interstate 55, which may be a continuation of the elevated plank road in the image above.

Whitehaven,  a part of Memphis, is the largest neighborhood in South Memphis and the major traffic artery of the community is U.S. Route 51, later known as Elvis Presley Boulevard.

This roadway began as a toll "Plank Road" built between Memphis and Hernando, Mississippi in 1852.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehaven,_Memphis,_Tennessee

logging truck in 1936 getting out of the woods with the help of a crude plank road to prevent the narrow tires from sinking into soft forest ground

https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agsnorth/id/14448/rec/542

the cover art of Fort Bragg (Images of America) by Sylvia E. Bartley, a great ol plank road

https://www.amazon.com/Bragg-Images-America-Sylvia-Bartley/dp/1467130850

thanks Steve!

http://catalog.library.ca.gov/F/EIQMYVQVU363HJVBQVJL8FAQN7GAAAFIHI1YGHBPB3NNMNYVMS-10955?func=find-b&amp=&amp=&request=001388025&find_code=SYS&pds_handle=GUEST