Road Construction on Payson Main Street 1917--Photo of the Day

    In the rare old photograph above, shows work on Payson’s Main Street from First North to Second South in 1917 when the city took the momentous step in paving three blocks of the business district in the downtown area.  The horses and manpower are very much in evidence.
    In Payson in 1917, the road contractor absorbed what local labor he could and brought to the scene a couple or so plodding horses and dump carts. A steam-powered paving mixer was used. And wheelbarrows, which were loaded by hand, played a big part in the conveying of gravel and cement for mixing and afterwards hauled the mixture for laying. The finishing work was done with hand tampers, shaped to conform to the desired crown of the pavement and made of heavy timber, with plow handles on each end.  These were manned by husky individuals, who did the finishing work to bring smoothness Quite a contrast from the massive steel road-paving equipment of today.
    Road traffic in 1917 in Payson was light and still is compared with that of big city areas. But there are times when motor vehicles operate at minimum speed up and down the business section of Payson now, moving along bumper to bumper in both directions.
    In 1917,  the automobiles played a part in the lives of so few Payson people that the cementing of Main Street for three blocks seemed almost like an unnecessary expense for the business men on those blocks. They paid for all of the paving for 18 feet out from the curb the full length of their property, the state paying for the few feet left in between. Later those few business men whose property was corner property or that on Utah Avenue leading from Main Street to First West were billed for all of the paving fronting! their ground. In contrast, the rest of Utah Avenue was paved much later as a county road with no expense whatever to property owners.
    Little could those men who paid for Payson's first cement roads see ahead to visualize how motorized travel would increase. Little did they realize what great improvements in paving practice would come.
    What the 1917 business men of Payson brought to the town permitted faster and more pleasurable travel for residents of this area. What they achieved was one of the forerunners of the many roads that have been converted to hard-surfaced ones, some of which have been made! today with highly mechanized  equipment like the steel slip-! form pavers uses in highway construction today..