Around 1820, John Loudan McAdam the father of modern road building, a Scottish engineer revolutionized how roads were built around the world. The McAdam system used single-sized crushed stone layers of small angular stones that were placed in a shallow chambered and compacted. It was the biggest innovation in road building since the Roman empire and replaced the old process of laying out large flat rocks, attempting to create a level surface. By 1825, this system, then known as the macadam system was being used around the world, and President John Quincy Adams reported that because of this new invention, the National Road to be completed under budget.
John McAdam first came to America in 1770 when his father passed away, and helped his uncle start the New York Chamber of Commerce which included American patriots, such as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. John became a successful businessman, but along with his uncle remained loyal to the British. After the war, John and his wife and children quickly moved back to Scotland, where he acquired a controlling interest in the iron works and mills of the area producing coal. Here, McAdam began experimenting with road construction. By 1804, he was a trustee for 34 Road Trusts and began to propose improvements to the infrastructure and eventual a novel solution to the British Parliament for their consideration. In 1816, McAdam was appointed surveyor for the Bristol Turnpike Trust, and this is where he first began using crushed stone mixed with gravel on a layer of foundation stones. The roads had a chamber making them slightly convex so that the rainwater could quickly runoff to the side instead of puddling on the structure.
This new approach to building roads, quickly spread around the world including the United States where it was applied to the National Road, also known as the Cumberland Road. John McAdam's approach became known simply as the macadam plan and was first used in the United States in 1823 to "Boonsborough Turnpike Road", a privately built road running from Hagerstown to Boonsboro, Maryland. This road fed into the National Road east of Cumberland. The first use of the macadam plan or system on the National Road itself was by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under Secretary of War James Barbour and Major General Alexander Macomb. The U.S. Army engineers received extensive training in road building and construction while at West Point, and the macadam system was included in the training. In 1825, President John Quincy Adams gave this "recent invention in the mode of construction" much credit in the "most promising auspices" that the Cumberland road could be completed at a "great reduction in the comparative cost of the work".
In Adam's 1825 State of the Union address, he discussed many of the public works projects that were happening including canals, road, and light houses. It was in this section, where he referenced the "recent invention".
"The acts of Congress of the last session relative to the surveying, marking, or laying out roads in the Territories of Florida, Arkansas, and Michigan, from Missouri to Mexico, and for the continuation of the Cumberland road, are, some of them, fully executed, and others in the process of execution. Those for completing or commencing fortifications have been delayed only so far as the Corps of Engineers has been inadequate to furnish officers for the necessary superintendence of the works. Under the act confirming the statutes of Virginia and Maryland incorporating the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, three commissioners on the part of the United States have been appointed for opening books and receiving subscriptions, in concert with a like number of commissioners appointed on the part of each of those States. A meeting of the commissioners has been post-poned, to await the definitive report of the board of engineers.
The light-houses and monuments for the safety of our commerce and mariners, the works for the security of Plymouth Beach and for the preservation of the islands in Boston Harbor, have received the attention required by the laws relating to those objects respectively. The continuation of the Cumberland road, the most important of them all, after surmounting no inconsiderable difficulty in fixing upon the direction of the road, has commenced under the most promising of auspices, with the improvements of recent invention in the mode of construction, and with advantage of a great reduction in the comparative cost of the work."
References
Presidency.ucsb.edu. (2018). John Quincy Adams: First Annual Message. [online] Available at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29467 [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].McFadden, C., Shop, I., McFadden, C., McFadden, C., McFadden, C. and Engineering, I. (2018). John Loudon McAdam: The Father of the Modern Road. [online] Interestingengineering.com. Available at: https://interestingengineering.com/john-loudon-mcadam-the-father-of-the-modern-road [Accessed 14 Jan. 2018].
Raitz, K., Thompson, G. and Pauer, G. (1996). The National Road. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p.150.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Rakeman_%E2%80%93_First_American_Macadam_Road.jpg
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