Gile Kendall and His Four Horse Drawn Snow Plow

Gile Kendall and his four horse drawn snow plow

Taking care of the many miles of Strafford roads has never been easy and every annual town meeting from the first one held in Strafford in 1778, has had roads on its agenda.

In the earliest days there were surveyors of highways, each of which had their own district and a 1779 Vermont law required each male from 16 to 60 ( with a few exceptions) to work four days a year on the road under the direction of the surveyor. A 1780 law gave the surveyor the additional authority to order any inhabitant to provide such oxen or equipment as might be needed, at a set rate of pay and under penalty of a fine for refusing. From initially three surveyors, the number grew to 38 in 1848.

One of Strafford's seven snow rollers in action

A 1892 law required each town to choose one or two Road Commissioners to take charge of its road and ended the practice of "working out" the highway tax in labor. Even so more than 50 men worked on snow removal in 1916, "breaking" roads, shoveling, or "rolling" the roads with one of seven snow rollers acquired since the town meeting first voted for them in 1902.

The first appointed Permanent Highway Commissioner was Frank Brown, who held this office for a total of 28 years between 1912 and 1951. While there was a gradual move toward a smaller, more skilled workforce, work was still sometimes done by local farmers including a young Gile Kendall pictured here.

The last Permanent Highway Commissioner appointed by the Selectboard was this same Gile Kendall (1956 - 1962) who was also the last elected Road Commissioner ( 1956-1964 and 1965-1974) and our first appointed Road Foreman (1974-1979). By one title or another Gile had sole charge of the town's roads, under the selectmen, for 22 years.