Building a road through swampy land?

oosik · Apr 29, 2018

The Alaska Highway( now called the AlCan) was built in the 40's. Example of a major road that EXTENSIVELY used corduroy with great success.

PILOON · Apr 29, 2018

When we built our road (going on 35 yrs now) the marsh was so dense that we felled trees on right side to fall to the left and those on the left felled to the s., Luckily most were cedar.

Down side was this was in the height of black fly season and hot.
DEET was the order of the day.
Also extra oil in the chainsaw created a fog that bugs did not appreciate.

LOL, fortunately the lake was close by so a quick soothing dip cooled the itches and made us more sociably tolerable.

rd_macgregor · May 1, 2018

I agree with posters suggesting a corduroy road. I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to include a specific pathway for water to get past the road, though (eg a culvert, channel or drain tiles). This type of road can be buried/surfaced to make a smooth walking path or driving lane...which also raises the road further above the waterline and surrounding mud. Make it wide enough that you'll likely never drive off the edge, though!

mapper · May 1, 2018

No matter which method you use, ditch both sides and put in culverts to move the water, otherwise your just building a dam. The ditching will collect the water and move it to the culvert. I had a 4 inch culvert under my driveway that drains about 5 acres next door for many years and while it would move some water it also plugged up often, l replaced it last year with a 6 inch pipe that has been a lot less trouble.

Deere Dude · May 1, 2018

I had a similar thing only worse. It was a foot or so deeper marsh and 100' long. I thought the cat would get stuck. I had the cat standing by and scooped out a couple feet of mush than had dump trucks of stone, 3" to 9-12" size and keep dumping and leveling. I had 6-8 trucks going back and forth. It had to be shipped in from a quarry 15 miles away so it wasn't cheap but it worked out so well the cat driver was surprised.

Had a 24" culvert but a 15- 18" would have worked. Then put road gravel over the top 4" and smoothed it out. I never had to add gravel in 10 years to remedy low spots. I did add a few inches on the whole 700/' driveway to beautify it.

greenerdreams · Jun 3, 2022

we had quite a few really muddy areas that even my wide track dozer couldn't float on. I found a local logging operation that ran a topsoil screener and sold the screened stuff but just stockpiled all the waste rock and sticks. As long as i supplied the trucks they gave me as much of the rock mix as i needed for free. we just kept backing up the trucks and dumping/smoothing as we went. it worked perfectly and never had an issue with getting stuck in those areas. i did make some skinny corduroy trails with large chunks of tree trunk and then ran a stump grinder over the tops after they were set to create a smooth top, it worked pretty well, eventually we added some soil and they became part of a dirt bike trail.