Importance of The King Road Drag
D. Ward King was widely admired in his day. Tributes came from everywhere. With the exception of the railroads, the better roads his invention brought about benefitted nearly everyone in a highly visible and totally obvious way. The "before and after" contrast was dramatic. In fact, the widespread use of the King Road Drag came along near the time Henry Ford started mass producing automobiles. Solid roads meant people could use their clackety Model T automobiles, especially on the roads between cities. Solid rural roads also made possible reliable rural mail delivery, which did much to promote commerce in the United States between city based businesses and the rural population. For instance, it allowed Sears and Roebuck to start sending out its catalogues to small towns and farms and thereby vastly increase the size of its customer base.
As a sign of how much Maitland revered his memory, there was a "gigantic maple tree" that was "situated on the lawn in a commanding position", which came to be designated the "King Memorial Tree." Years later, the Maitland-Skidmore Road was constructed through the lawn of the King farm. Its builders made a "jog" in the road around it to "preserve it as a memorial to the pioneer who cherished it from its infancy". Seventy years after Ward's death, "state scientists" were struggling to keep it alive after a particularly bad drought year. A history of Maitland said that "There are few trees in the state so admired and known." The Maitland, Missouri article on Wikipedia mentions itself as the home of D. Ward King.
Technology has long since left the horse-drawn King Road Drag far behind. The King Road Drag made possible the use of the motor vehicle and, ironically, the motor vehicle doomed the King Road Drag, at least in its horse-drawn form. The motor-powered road grader quickly rendered its horse-drawn predecessor obsolete. However, without the road improvements brought about by the King Road Drag in its day and the subsequent advent of the automobile, American life would be different today in ways that cannot be easily imagined. For instance, how many people living today never would have been born, if bad roads and poor transportation had prevented so much as one set of their ancestors from meeting or even meeting later than they did? With that thought in mind, how many people living in America and elsewhere unsuspectingly owe their very existence to David Ward King and his King Road Drag?
Read more about this topic: David Ward King
Famous quotes containing the words importance of, importance, king, road and/or drag:
“Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men.... It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Gargantua, at the age of four hundred four score and forty- four years begat his son Pantagruel, from his wife, named Badebec, daughter of the King of the Amaurotes in Utopia, who died in child-birth: because he was marvelously huge and so heavy that he could not come to light without suffocating his mother.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.”
—Alfred Noyes (1880–1958)
“Since man began
To drag down man
And nation nation.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)