What difference does it make? roman roads weren't suitable for use
by bicycle and are not of the kind being discussed. Roads consisting of
stones layed next to each other does not make for a good bicycling
surface. In fact, if you want to discourage bicycling, which seems to be
the point everytime somebody brings this up, I suggest using Roman road
building technology.

If you people are going to argue this stuff at least get out of your cars
and on two wheels for a bit to get some basic understanding.

Images of roman roads:
http://www.bible-history.com/geography/images/appian-way.jpg
http://www.highways.gov.uk/images/history_roads.gif
http://www.streetworks.fsnet.co.uk/roman/romanroads.htm

But, why don't we see what the federal highway administration
has to say:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/rw93.htm
Highway Existence: -- 100 Years and Beyond
A peaceful campaign of progress and reform:
The Federal Highway Administration at 100
"In the second half of the 19th century, the railroads dominated
interstate travel, and the limited pre-railroad network of roads fell
into neglect. In the 1880s, however, the growing popularity of a new mode
of transportation, the "ordinary" bicycle -- the type with the large
front wheel -- was the first sign of change."
<...>
"The biggest problem was that, outside the cities, the nation's bad roads
made bicycling a laborious, dangerous process. As one contemporary slogan
put it, the roads were, "Wholly unclassable, almost impassable, scarcely
jackassable!" The Good Roads Movement was a response to this problem.
Bicycle groups, led by the League of American Wheelmen (L.A.W.), and
manufacturers, led by Col. Albert Pope, worked at the federal, state, and
local level to secure road improvement legislation."

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/bicycle.htm

"The problem was that roads outside cities were in terrible shape ("hardly
jackassable" in one common phrase of the day). Since the advent of the
railroad in the 1830's, roads had devolved to the lowest levels of
government (counties and townships) that had the least incentive and
resources to improve them. Bicyclists and their national, State, and
local organizations became the earliest agitators for good roads. Even
before farmers. The bicycle interests were responsible for many State
road improvement laws, and also deserve much of the credit for convincing
Congress in 1893 to authorize the U.S. Office of Road Inquiry in the
Department of Agriculture, with a $10,000 budget a mission of education
and encouragement. (That Agency evolved into the Federal Highway
Administration.) So the bicycle craze led to the good roads revolution
and encouraged it (in cooperation with farming and railroad interests)
during the last decade of the 19th century."

"The bicycle craze also contributed to the Automobile Era. Tinkering with
a variety of early horseless carriages resulted in the development of the
internal-combustion powered automobile in the mid-1880's in Europe. The
first gasoline-powered automobile in the United States was built in 1893
and was operated in Springfield, Massachusetts, just a few weeks before
the Office of Road Inquiry went into operation. The automobile would soon
supplant the bicycle in the public's affections; what had seemed like a
revolution in 1890 had become an artifact of an earlier era by 1905. The
automobile interests took over the Good Roads Movement."

I don't understand this irrational need to disconnect everything that
followed from the development of the bicycle from it. It's as if people
want to seek out everything possible to remove bicyclists from the road
and will even deny history to that goal. Totally irrational, but that's
what anti-bicycling people are, irrational. Get stuck behind some driver
doing 5mph slower than you want to go for 5 miles, no problem. Have
to slow by 5mph for 5 seconds to time a pass of a bicyclist, that's way
too much to ask.

So they only had mountain bikes then?

Bernard