It’s fairly common for construction projects to unearth something from years past.
“You never know what you’re going to dig up under the street around here or anywhere else for that matter,” said Kerry Bloedorn, Pioneer Park Historical Complex Director.
As Bloedorn listened to Rhinelander Public Works Director Randy Myrum give a construction update during Monday night’s City Council meeting, he was eager to hear what beneath the pavement was holding construction crews up.
“It’s just so cool. When you look at it you just think, ‘This appears to be a dirty log.’ And once you’ve seen one dirty old log, you’ve seen them all, but it’s an important part of our history here in northern Wisconsin, in Rhinelander,” said Bloedorn.
Corduroy roads are roads with a layer of logs laid across the dirt.
It was a common practice in places like Rhinelander that have a lot of wetlands.
“Wherever they were laying new streets in the late 1800s/early 1900s if there was a soft spot, they just cut the trees down adjacent to the road, in the road, and laid them down in this kind of web of logs which supported the roadbed,” said Bloedorn.
You can find evidence of the corduroy roads throughout the Northwoods.
Bloedorn says every winter with the frost heave logs will pop out from under a gravel road near his home.
Because of the soil found in and around the wetlands where these corduroy roads were put in, Bloedorn says the logs are usually well preserved.
Meaning the ones found six feet under Anderson Street could date back to Rhinelander’s beginnings.
“Just based on the knowledge I have of Rhinelander’s history, those are probably laid in the earliest days of Rhinelander’s history. The railroad came up here in 1881. They started platting out the early road system from downtown, Anderson Street among some of the earliest streets in Rhinelander. All the history books of downtown Rhinelander talk about these wet spots being around, places that had to be filled in. But who knew that Anderson Street was one of those streets.”
Construction crews will need to remove the corduroy roads under Anderson Street to prevent future damage to the new pavement.
