As a girl growing up in the late 1970s, Heather Uhlar spent many happy hours riding her pony along the dirt roads in her hometown, Chatham, N.Y., stopping here and there to swim in a creek or amble through rolling pastures flecked with asters and goldenrods.
Even then, she understood that Chatham’s dirt roads were something wonderful.
“I just always thought dirt roads gave our area character,” Ms. Uhlar said recently. “They made us special.”
Since then, as Chatham has grown, Ms. Uhlar has seen some of the prettiest roads get paved over. In her dismay, she helped start a nonprofit, the Chatham Dirt Road Coalition, which lobbies to promote an appreciation for dirt roads and slow the advance of the asphalt trucks.
It turned out a lot of people felt as she did: In a town of about 4,100 people, her Facebook group now has more than 1,300 members. According to the coalition’s website, dirt roads “are a living connection to our history.” The site features a hand-drawn map of the town, which depicts Chatham’s network of dirt roads in light brown.
Not everyone shares Ms. Uhlar’s enthusiasm for dirt roads. Unpaved byways are difficult to maintain and costlier in the long run than gravel; they are also muddy in spring and dusty in summer.
“Honestly,” said Jeff Antalek, Chatham’s highway superintendent, “I’ve never gotten a call from anybody that lives on a paved road that told me they want me to tear it up and turn it into an unpaved road.”
Mr. Antalek lives on a dirt road himself. “I have antique cars,” he said. “It’s a royal pain driving them in and out. They get dirty, even just sitting in my barn because of the dust off the road.”
Coalition members don’t dispute that dirt roads are expensive and occasionally a nuisance. They simply agree that the hassle and extra cost to maintain them are well worth it.
“It’s different walking on a dirt road than it is walking on a macadam road,” said John Wapner, a psychologist who lives in Chatham in an 1852 farmhouse. You can drive fast on asphalt, he said, but dirt roads force you to slow down, take in the scenery and enjoy the rural quiet. You notice things you wouldn’t have otherwise.
“It feels to me like you’re walking on the land, not over the land,” Mr. Wapner added.
As dirt road fans see it, something essential to the town’s identity is lost each time a road is paved.
A century ago, Chatham was an agricultural town, its rocky hills dominated by small dairy farms. But as family farms have gradually disappeared, more and more weekenders have arrived from New York City, two and a half hours to the south. Dirt roads that once passed only a farmhouse or two can now be shared by 20 or more residences.
Unlike some of its neighboring towns in the Hudson Valley, Chatham still has more dirt roads than asphalt ones. But traffic has grown, increasing the pressure to pave.
One chilly Sunday morning recently, Ms. Uhlar, 49, stood outside her family’s stables in riding breeches and a dirt-smudged windbreaker. Part of her fondness for dirt roads stems from her love of horses. In the pasture nearby, her Irish sport horse, Valhalla, rolled on its back contentedly, as Ms. Uhlar enumerated the roads lost to asphalt during her lifetime.
There was Woodward Road, where she grew up. After it was paved, cars started driving faster past her house, and her parents grew more protective about letting her play outside. There was Jefferson Hill Road, where she used to go riding. And Drowne Road, where her mother once worked at a local advertising agency. Ms. Uhlar used to visit her there in the afternoons. “That one broke my heart,” she said.
These days, she avoids riding on paved roads altogether, mostly out of concern for her horses. Too much time on asphalt, she said, can make a horse lame.
The battle between the paved and the unpaved is hardly new. In 1986, The New York Times, in an article titled “Debate on Dirt Roads: Charm vs. Comfort,” chronicled how residents of Bedford, Lewisboro and other New York suburbs known for their rustic byways were unhappy about impassable and rutted roads.
Yet across the country, as development pressures increase, a growing number of towns are taking steps to preserve dirt roads. And in some cases, paved roads are being restored to gravel, said David Orr, the director of the Cornell University Local Roads Program.
Mr. Orr said the movement had gained steam in the Hudson Valley after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when many people fled the city in search of rural safety and tranquillity. Some towns have passed laws to protect dirt roads and establish new criteria for paving.
In Chatham, what ultimately spurred Ms. Uhlar to action were rumors that several big construction projects were in the works, including a vineyard that might double as a wedding venue.
“Basically, when you have huge-scale usages on dirt roads,” Ms. Uhlar said, “they’re going to get paved. You can’t have that much traffic going up and down. Eventually, they’re going to want to widen the road. And that worried me.”
Her concerns were shared by Doug Welch, 69, a longtime resident who’d spent a career in advertising.
Mr. Welch grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., coming to New York City after college. Eventually, he bought a second home in Chatham, the kind of picturesque old farmhouse that has been fueling the dreams of greenery-starved New Yorkers for generations. (His quaint country home turned out to have a somewhat anomalous history: During World War I, it was briefly owned by the Horwitz family, whose sons would gain fame as the Three Stooges.)
Mr. Welch quickly grew besotted by the area’s rural charm and eventually moved to Chatham full time. He also became a dirt road devotee, given to quoting the naturalist John Muir, who said, “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
When Mr. Welch saw how popular Ms. Uhlar’s group had become, he decided to marshal his advertising skills in support of the cause. His goal was nothing less than ending paving in Chatham. “You don’t wait until the machines are at the end of the road,” Mr. Welch said, “to let people know you value the roads.”
The coalition distributed bumper stickers and the dirt road maps. It raised money to rent billboards in town, reminding residents that dirt roads are “a rural heritage worth preserving.”
It also became a sponsor of a popular dirt-road bike race called the Farmer’s Daughter Gravel Grinder, which draws hundreds of people to Chatham each May.
Mr. Welch discovered the coalition at an auspicious moment. The town of Chatham was drawing up a comprehensive plan, and a survey of residents showed sizable support for preserving dirt roads. Partly for budget reasons, Chatham hasn’t embarked on a major paving project since then. But some town officials privately acknowledge that the coalition’s efforts have also made them reluctant to broach the subject.
Of course, some people in town would love to see an asphalt truck come their way. Ronald MacFarlane lives on a dirt road that connects a major state route with a heavily traveled local one. It tends to get a lot of through traffic.
“I live 300 feet off the road, and we can get dust in the house,” Mr. MacFarlane said. “When a vehicle goes by, it looks like a dust cloud, and the wind blows it up to the house eventually.” Mr. MacFarlane has actually pleaded with the town to pave his road, but, he said, has been told that money’s too tight.
“I even thought of running for town supervisor at one time to get it done,” he added.
Paving roads can be expensive, but, in the long run, maintaining them becomes cheaper, said Mr. Antalek, the highway superintendent. Dirt roads need to be regraded each spring, at considerable expense, and a heavy rain can make them almost impassable. Last year, Chatham went through nearly 14,000 tons of gravel to fix ruts and potholes, at a cost of nearly $100,000.
“It’s almost a losing battle with dirt roads,” Mr. Antalek said. “You almost can’t throw enough money at them to keep them well maintained.”
Living on a dirt road can be an ordeal, especially in springtime, when the ground thaws and the roads turn into a muddy quagmire, said Gail Behrens Day, whose family are longtime farmers in Chatham. But you learn to adjust, she said. In the wet months, you take the pickup truck to town instead of the car.
“It’s just the rhythm of the road,” Ms. Day said. “You know there’s going to be a mud season, and it’s going to be days, or it could be two weeks, when it might be really bad. But it’s going to get better.”
And then there’s washboarding, a phenomenon in which horizontal ridges form over time on the road’s surface and can make a car rattle like a plane going through turbulence. Drivers who go too fast on dirt roads sooner or later pay a price in broken axles and ruined tires. Ms. Day pointed out a nearby house that was recently purchased by a musician from Brooklyn.
“When he first came, he drove too fast. Now, he doesn’t drive too fast. I think he figured it out on his own,” she said dryly.
Mr. Welch admits that dirt roads can be rough on cars. He said he had to replace his tires every 20,000 miles or so. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s just kind of vital for the character of Chatham. If you pave the roads, it’s not Chatham anymore,” he said.
One afternoon, before winter had set in, as the sun drifted in and out of the clouds, Mr. Welch took his aging BMW convertible for a spin along Chatham’s back roads. As an ad man, Mr. Welch understands good visuals, and several times he pulled over to rave about the pastoral vistas unfolding before him.
“Look at that view. It’s amazing!” Mr. Welch said. “To me that screams ‘rural.’” He gestured toward a herd of brown cows grazing on a grassy hillside, the purple Catskill Mountains in the far distance. A red-tailed hawk stared down from a telephone wire. A small group of wild turkeys strutted across the road. The only sound came from a nearby stream, which turns into a torrent each spring when the snow melts. But after this year’s long, dry summer it was little more than a trickle. It was a scene of utter tranquillity.
“Do you think this would be the same if this were a paved road?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”