t no
highway surveyor has a right, without the written approbation of the
selectmen, to cause a watercourse, occasioned by the wash of the
road, to be so conveyed by the roadside as to incommode a house, a
store, shop, or other building, or to obstruct a person in the
prosecution of his business.[11] Properly authorized city or town
officers may trim or lop off trees and bushes standing in the public
ways, or cut down and remove such trees; and may cause to be dug up
and removed whatever obstructs such ways, or endangers, hinders, or
incommodes persons travelling therein.[12] Even the boundaries of
public ways are so well guarded that when they are ascertainable no
length of time less than forty years justifies the continuance of a
fence or building within their limits; but the same may, upon the
presentment of a grand jury, be removed as a nuisance.[13]

[9] Pub. St. c. 49, Sec. 99.

[10] 13 Gray, 601.

[11] Pub. St. c. 52, Sec. 12.

[12] St. 1885, c. 123.

[13] Pub. St. c. 54.

It is so important that the public ways be kept free for travel,
that any person may take down and remove gates, rails, bars, or
fences upon or across highways, unless the same have been there
placed for the purpose of preventing the spreading of a disease
dangerous to the public health, or have been erected or continued by
the license of the selectmen or county commissioners.[14] A highway
surveyor acting within the scope of his authority may dig up and
remove the soil within the limits of the public ways for the purpose
of repairing the same, and may carry it from one part of the town to
another;[15] and he has a right to deposit the soil thus removed on
his own land, if that is the best way of clearing the road of
useless material.[16]

[14] Pub. St. c. 54.

[15] 125 Mass. 216.

[16] 128 Mass. 546.

Though the law is imperative that the roads must be kept in good
condition, and to this end gives municipal corporations great
powers, yet let no one who is not a highway surveyor or in his
employ imagine that he can repair a road not on his own land with
impunity; for it has been decided that if an unauthorized person
digs up the soil on the roadside by another person's land for the
purpose of repairing the road, he is a trespasser and liable for
damages, although he does only what a highway surveyor might
properly do.[17] It is also the duty of cities and towns to guard
with suffic