up the
necessity for improvement. The early solid tire vehicles could barely
operate in the thick red Virginia mud, thus greatly retarding
transportation of produce and milk. "If you had three drops of rain on
the road, [the tires] started spinning and you couldn't go anywhere much
without chains," recollected one early farmer. "Every truck carried a
set of tire chains in the event it rained. In the summertime if it
rained, you stuck right on the first little grade you hit." Not until
1922 did farmers attempt to haul their goods in trucks, and even then
they "broke more axles than anything else."[183]

Farmers were acutely aware of the situation and some of their earliest
united efforts were focused on road improvement. Records of Farmer's
Club #1 show the topic to be the subject of discussion at several
meetings a year, beginning in 1909. Initially they tried only to
interest the county in undertaking repairs but as conditions worsened,
the landowners began to appeal to county judges and the Board of
Supervisors for bond issues to surface Little River Turnpike and other
main roads. Resolutions, such as the following from a Herndon-based
club, were regularly sent to government officials:

Resolved: That we, Farmer's Club #4 ... favor petitioning the
circuit judge of the county to order an election for the purpose of
determining whether bonds shall be issued for the sum of $50,000
for the construction of a macadam road from Little River Turnpike
at Chantilly to the Leesburg Pike at Dranesville, and as much more
as possible.[184]

In some cases the clubs even worked together to build their own
roads.[185] After ten years of pressure by farm groups, a bond issue was
presented to the voters to pave the Leesburg Pike, the road from
Chantilly to Herndon which ran through Floris, and a thoroughfare
extending beyond Herndon to Mock Corner. The weight with which area
residents viewed this issue is shown in a statement made by the Herndon
Chamber of Commerce: "If this bond issue fails, it will be the greatest
calamity that has befallen this community in many years." Happily the
bond issue did pass and this, plus the statewide road program sponsored
under the leadership of Governor Harry F. Byrd from 1926 to 1930,
eliminated the bulk of the road problems. Only a few years later, in
1928, Fairfax was one of the foremost counties in Virginia in the area
of transportation, with over 160 miles of surfa