This will also go to PL also, if it ever resurfaces-

Some friends of mine recently bought a 1790 Cape on what is probably the
only remaining one-lane, gravel road in this immediate area. The road goes
down the center of a narrow neck of land, probably less than 1/2 mile at
its widest point, between a stream that is just recovering from years of
run-off from an upstream farm and the Sheepscot River, one of the few
active salmon-run rivers left on the East Coast. The Sheepscot is also the
home of some rare beds of riverine mussels as well as some other fragile
biota.

The road goes for about three miles before it peters out into a jeep-trail
which then reconnects with a similar stretch of what, once upon a time,
constituted a unified through-road.

In addition to my friend's house there are about 6 other homes on the road,
4 of which date from at least the 1820s.

The Selectmen recently announced their intention to "upgrade" the road up
to, but
not including, the jeep-trail. It will be widened to a full two lanes with
a substantial shoulder added outside that. They claim no current intention
to either black-top the road, or up-grade the jeep-trail to return the road
to useful transit status (there is a parallel hard-surfaced road which
brings you to within 3/4 mile of both ends of the Neck road). The upgrading
will involve the removal of hundreds of trees and portions of lawns and
gardens along the route.

They are about to hold the required public meeting to take comments on the
project, and, if pushed hard enough, maybe even explain their rational for
their decision to "up-grade" this lane that goes nowhere and serves very
few constituents.

It is not hard to make an environmentalist's argument against the project.
Documentation exists on the propulsive effect of improved transportation
infrastructure, even at this level, on development, and the connection
between development and fragile ecosystems such as exists on either side of
the neck.

I sense that there is also a good HP case to be made for preserving the
road as it is and am hoping for some suggestions as to how to go about
making this argument, or for some leads to other similar cases where this
position was successfully defended.

My thinking goes something like this- While it is certainly true that there
are other roads in the town that have historically and aesthetically better
examples of early architecture, none of those roads allow the user an
opportunity to (perforce, given the current condition of the neck road)
travel them at a pace akin to pre-auto speeds and see the houses sited in
relation to the road as they originally were, with vegetation of a
lane-like aspect that also cannot be found anywhere nearby.

So, does anyone know of any earlier arguments for the preservation of a
road? Can anyone add to my argument to give it more force?

Bruce