Roads built of poles or logs laid across the roadway are called corduroy roads, because of their corrugated or ribbed appearance. Like earth roads, they should never be built where it is possible to secure any other good material; but, as is frequently the case in swampy, timbered regions, other material is unavailable, and as the road would be absolutely impassable without them at certain seasons of the year, it is well to know how to make them. Roads of this character should be fifteen or sixteen feet wide, so as to enable wagons to pass each other. Logs are superior to poles for this purpose and should be used if possible. The following in regard to the construction of corduroy roads is from Gilmore's _Roads, Streets, and Pavements_:
"The logs are all cut the same length, which should be that of the required width of the road, and in laying them down such care in selection should be exercised as will give the smallest joints or openings between them. In order to reduce as much as possible the resistance to draft and the violence of the repeated shocks to which vehicles are subjected upon these roads, and also to render its surface practicable for draft animals, it is customary to level up between the logs with smaller pieces of the same length but split to a triangular cross section. These are inserted with edges downward in the open joints, so as to bring their surface even with the upper sides of the large logs, or as nearly so as practicable.
"Upon the bed thus prepared a layer of brushwood is put, with a few inches in thickness, with soil or turf on top to keep it in place. This completes the road. The logs are laid directly upon the natural surface of the soil, those of the same or nearly of the same diameter being kept together, and the top covering of soil is excavated from side ditches.
"Cross drains may usually be omitted in roads of this kind, as the openings between the logs, even when laid with utmost care, will furnish more than ample water way for drainage from the ditch on the upper to that on the lower side of the road. When the passage of a creek of considerable volume is to be provided for, and in localities subject to freshets, cross drains or culverts are made wherever necessary by the omission of two or more logs, the openings being bridged with planks, split rails, or poles laid transversely to the axis of the road and resting on cross beams notched into the logs on either side."