In Grand Forks, history isn't always at eye level. Nor does history always draw your eyes upward, the way the USS Constitution's masts or the spire of the Old North Church in Boston do.
In Grand Forks, some of the best history can be found by looking down. And no, we're not talking about the well-known granitoid pavement.
We're talking about the pavement that came before granitoid, back when horses -- not horseless carriages -- ruled the streets.
That would be wood-block paving, few sections of which remain.
One serves as a driveway pad for the Cottonwood Community Church at Belmont Road's north end. If you walk along the sidewalk by the church, you'll see it: Across the street from Odin's Belmont Service, the pad at first looks like it's made of black cobblestones. You could walk over it a hundred times without giving the cobbles a second look.
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But that second look would be worthwhile, because it would show that the cobbles actually are creosoted wooden blocks.
And a third look would show that the wood was not simply sawn into log-like blocks and laid flat. Instead, the blocks were set upright, so that on the exposed portion, the age-rings of some of the blocks are beautifully clear.
This design likely was meant to add strength and durability to the paving -- and it worked, given that this wood-block pavement probably is more than 100 years old.
In the years before granitoid, much of downtown Grand Forks was paved in this way.
"The blocks were cut from Norway pine and tamarack, treated by the Kettle River Quarries Co. to 20 lbs. of creosote oil per cubic foot," reads a 1909 article in the journal Engineering and Contracting about Grand Forks' paving project.
"The fire department has made several runs over the pavement and are well pleased with the results. The horses have never fallen down. They use 'never-slip' shoes."
Grand Forks was not alone in either its pavement or its concern about horses. "At the end of the 20th century, wood block paving is a curiosity," reads a 1998 article, "A century of parquet pavements: Wood as a paving material in the U.S. and abroad, 1840-1940."
"At the beginning of the century before inexpensive mass-produced automobiles made paving a high priority for governments of industrialized nations, wood paving materials offered a quiet, resilient, inexpensive and easily repaired and replaced surface for steel-rimmed wagon and carriage wheels and iron horseshoes.
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"Moreover, animal excrement did not penetrate treated wood blocks but dried to be blown or swept away."
The word "quiet" is an interesting one in the passage above. What does "quiet" have to do with pavement?
More than you might think, the article notes:
"It is not easy for modern men and women to imagine the noise generated by hundreds of steel-tired wagon wheels and horse shoes on bricks, steel iron or granite block streets sandwiched between multileveled buildings.
That's why "a wooden pavement was not a small blessing in the horse and wagon society," the article continues.
Few signs of that "horse and wagon society" remain in Grand Forks. But the small section of wood block paving is one. It's a direct link with a fascinating chapter in our past, and it's worth a look.
-- Tom Dennis for the Herald
