What year did Bermuda roads become paved?

Answer 1

Answering this question requires knowing what, precisely, is meant by "paved".

It is quite possible that some streets in urban areas or elsewhere may have been surfaced with paving stones prior to the 20th Century, but that is beyond my knowledge. Bermuda's soft limestone is not ideal for paving stones, and a more durable material would likely have needed to be imported.

Outside of the municipal areas, the country roads were little developed in Bermuda for centuries. The population was much more collected within St. George's and Hamilton, particularly. Horses were few, and expensive. Most things that needed to be moved any distance, including people, were transported with the greatest ease and speed by boat, and this remained the primary form of transport into the 20th Century. By then, bicyclyes had appeared, which would soon throng the islands' streets and roads.

In most areas of Bermuda, the soil layer is very thin, often less than a few inches. Regular use wears paths and unprepared carriageways down to the limestone beneath, and provides a suitable surface for pedestrians and equestrians, and slow moving wheeled traffic, but could not compete with watercraft except over short distances, where the walk to and from the water would make the advantages of travelling by boat negligible (it should be noted that the Tribe Roads, the first system of roads, which also acted as geographic markers, took the shortest paths across the islands from the South to North Shores. As thoroughfares, they served only to allow the quickest accesses to the water's edge, where passengers and goods could be loaded onto boats)

The first major advance in Bermuda's road design and layout came with the development of the colony as a Royal Navy base, following US independence, which required its simultaneous development as a military garrison, with forts, batteries, and camps scattered around the archipelago. The military required a better method of quickly deploying military units overland to wherever they might be required, and built a series of new roads, notably the Military Road (now known as the South Shore Road).

At some point prior to 1940, the Bermuda Government began surfacing the roads. It operated a facility on Ord Road, in Warwick or Paget, as I recollect, where limestone was crushed into macadam, which was spread on the roads, giving them a characteristic whiteness. This surface required regular replacement.

The first surfacing of major roads in tarmacadam (or tarmac), gravel bound in bitumen, took place during the Second World War, this time by the US Army. The US had been granted free base rights in Bermuda in 1941, and set about building two air bases, one at each end of the archipelago. As the British Army had found before them, the US Navy and US Army learnt that Bermuda's road system was not up to their requirements. Other than emergency vehicles (although even the police relied on bicycles, having a single car at that point, and one licensed driver, as I recollect), motor vehicles had been banned from public roads since before the First World War, and the roads served primarily bicycles, horse-drawn carriages, and donkey carts.

The US Army brought in extra trains to operate on the new and fragile light passenger railway built before the war, but this narrow guage system was still not sufficient for their needs, and cars and large trucks soon appeared. The US Army undertook the tarmacing of the major roads as part of its improvements to make them suitable for heavy motor vehicle traffic. I cannot be certain of the year the first road was tarmaced, but it was likely between 1941, when US engineers and labourers arrived to begin work, and 1943, when the US Army/RAF airfield, Kindley Field, officially began operation. The likeliest deduction would be 1942.