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face roads through the county. “They’d haul rock from the quarries on LurayMountain and across from Chipmunk Hollow—that’s where they got most of the stone. Then the prisoners would beat up the rock to a certain size, three or four inches. That was the base of the road,” Atkins recalled. “Then they’d pour tar over that.”
The tar was heated in small kettles by wood fires in those days. But at the time Atkins began working for the state, crews had advanced to using kerosene burners to bring the tar to spreading temperature in 150 to 200 gallon pots.
Relying on convict labor didn’t pose the problems that a similar arrangement would create now, according to Atkins. “Every once in a while, a prisoner would escape. But without roads and traffic, there was no way he could get too far. They never could stay away very long."
Nobody traveled any great distance in a day over those first roads. Atkins re
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