Few who were acquainted with primitive conditions have left us anything vivid in the way of descriptions of roads and road-making. "The pioneers of our State," wrote Calvin Fletcher, in an exceedingly interesting paper read before the Indiana Centennial Association, July 4, 1900, "found Indian trails, which, with widening, proved easy lines of travel. Many of these afterward became fixtures through use, improvement, and legislation.... Next to the hearty handshake and ready lift at the handspike, where neighbors swapped work at log-rollings, was the greeting when, at fixed periods, all able-bodied men met to open up or work upon the roads. My child-feet pattered along many of the well-constructed thoroughfares of today when they were only indistinct tracings--long lines of deadened trees, deep-worn horse paths, and serpentine tracks of wabbling wagon wheels. The ever-recurring road-working days and their cheerful observance, with time's work in rotting and fire's work in removing dead tree and stump, at last let in long lines of sunshine to dry up the mud, to burn up the miasma, and to bless the wayfarer to other parts, as well as to disclose what these pioneer road-makers had done for themselves by opening up fields in the forests.... To perfect easily and naturally these industries requires three generations. The forests must be felled, logs rolled and burned, families reared, and in most cases the land to be paid for. When this is accomplished a faithful picture would reveal not only the changes that had been wrought, but a host of prematurely broken down men and women, besides an undue proportion resting peacefully in country graveyards. A second generation straightens out the fields at odd corners, pulls the stumps, drains the wet spots, and casting aside the sickle of their father, swings the cradle over broader fields; and even trenches upon the plans of the third generation by pushing the claim of the reaper, the mower and the thresher.... The labor of the three generations in road-making I class as follows: To the first generation belonged locating the roads and the clearing the timber from them. The wet places would become miry and were repaired by the use of logs.... The roots and stumps caused many holes, called chuck holes, which were repaired by using brush and dirt--with the uniform result that at each end of the corduroy or brush repairs, a new mud or chuck hole would be formed in time; and thus until timber and brush became exhausted did the pioneer pave the way for the public and himself to market, to court, and to elections. The second generation discovered a value in the inexhaustible beds of gravel in the rivers and creeks, as well as beneath the soil. Roadbeds were thrown up, and the side ditches thus formed contributed to sound wheeling. Legislation tempted capital to invest and tollgates sprang up until the third generation removed them and assumed the burden of large expenditures from public funds for public benefit.