When the Klanderman family moved to Borculo in 1868 as the first settlers in the area, there were very few improved roads in the area. In fact in 1876, eight years later, there were only two improved roads leading to the Borculo Crossing. One road came from the south and the other from the West. There was no Ottawa County Road Commission at this time to build roads. When Olive Township was organized in 1857 one of the first elected officers was that of Highway commissioner. He had the power to raise road taxes and to contract the construction of local roads. Road building for the early settlers was a difficult task with no heavy equipment like bulldozers or road graders or even chainsaws to cut down the many trees. The lower areas often had to be filled with logs and then covered with dirt. This was called a Corduroy Road. The settlers did however have axes, crosscut saws, horse-drawn earth scrapers, and horse-drawn wagons to haul gravel. The farmers, who often worked on the roads in the winter months, were paid $1 a day or $2 a day if they brought their oxen or horses with wagons to haul gravel. Many farmers paid their property taxes by working on the township roads.
Travel on the local roads became more of a problem with the coming of the automobile. The autos would more easily get stuck in the muddy ruts than a team of horses and a wagon.
The minister of the Borculo Christian Reformed Church, Rev. E. Krohne, bought a Model T Ford in 1916. One day as he was driving down the north slope of the Borculo hill on 96th Avenue, his front wheel got caught in some deep ruts in the muddy road. He lost control the car and it flipped over on top of him. He suffered a broken arm and four fractured ribs.
Sim Vollink, who was following a distance behind with his peddle wagon that day, wasn't so lucky. His truck got stuck in the muddy stretch as the wheels sank down to the axles. Sim was returning to Vollink's Store located on Borculo's northeast corner, from his peddle wagon route west of Borculo bringing groceries to his customers who lived along their route. I'm sure the Borculo Garage had to pull out his truck with their wrecker.
In the early 1950's, Port Sheldon Street west of Borculo was always a muddy stretch of road when the frost came out of the ground. For years logs had been placed across some of the lower areas. Six inches of sand or gravel was then placed over the logs. The poor drainage and the high water table was the main cause of the road problem at this time.
In 1949 the Ottawa County Road Commission decided to correct the problem of the road. It needed a lot of fill dirt to raise the level of the road and put in drainage ditches on each side. On March 16, 1949, the road commission acquired a sand pit on Blair Street northwest of Borculo to provide all the fill dirt needed. Soon a small lake developed. The small lake became a very nice place for the local kids to go swimming. Lavern Luurtsema and Don VandenBosch remember using this lake as they lived nearby.
The committee decided to set aside one evening for the hauling of dirt from Blair Street to the site of the new Community building. Farmers came out that night with tractors and wagons and also trucks to haul dirt. Others came with shovels. My father had just purchased an Allis Chalmers WD with a front end loader and he volunteered the tractor to do the loading. He told me he wanted me to operate the tractor and loader. There were so many people who showed up with shovels we didn't even need a dump truck. In one evening all he dirt needed was hauled to the site.
The WD tractor was also used and enjoyed on our farm, especially the front end manure loader. We used it until the engine finally died. We sold it in 2004, fifty years after we purchased it