Comments on: Bar ditch

By: Kish

Kish — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 15:43:05 +0000

I grew up in the flat part of Texas where even a two-inch rain has no where to go. The country roads are high and the bar ditches are big and wide so the roads don’t flood. I live in an OKC suburb now, on a hill with a drainage issue between my house and next door. Yesterday I finished hand digging my mini bar ditch to divert the excess runoff from uphill along the property line out to the street instead of eroding my AC and generator pads. French drains clog up quick in fine clay soil!

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 21:06:29 +0000

Very interesting.

By: Vickie

Vickie — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 18:04:58 +0000

My dad use to say “all the beer bottles thrown in the ditch” was how the bar ditch got its name

By: Elaine Gibson

Elaine Gibson — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:16:33 +0000

We are visiting in Oklahoma and trying to figure out why we always called them bar ditches. My dad is 91 and he didn’t know. This makes perfect sense. That’s how the roadways are made on flat land. Although I do like the other explanation: my uncle frequented bars and he often ended up in the ditch.

By: Charles

Charles — Thu, 19 May 2016 02:18:51 +0000

A barrow is also a castrated boar hog. Borrow is the root word, that has been bastardized to “bar”

By: Richsand

Richsand — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 22:58:27 +0000

I once heard that a Bar Ditch was named because a Sickle Bar (on a tractor) was used to cut the grass along side of roads and the cutter would skim over the top of the ditch.

I also know of many times those coming from the local bar ran into the ditch. Take your pick.

By: D L Farrington

D L Farrington — Fri, 08 May 2015 23:37:02 +0000

I grew up in rural Colorado hearing the ditches along the roadway called “bar ditches” and occasionally some old timer called them a “borrow pit.” Someone once explained to me the concept of borrowing dirt from the ditch or pit to mound up the road, hence the name. I just read a memo from a civil engineer who referred to the same thing as a “barrow ditch,” which is the first time I recall seeing that usage. Which is why I googled it.

By: E L Caple

E L Caple — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 05:20:09 +0000

Civil engineers use the term “borrow pits” for the stock or fish ponds you see at almost every major highway interchange. It takes thousands of cubic yards of fill to build up the bridge approaches for a highway interchage. A friend of mine worked summers in college for a “dirt” or excavation company doing interstate highway work. His job was to approach farmers as to how they might like to have a nice cool stock pond or fishing lake for the grandkids, which was the source of all the fill they needed. Much cheaper than trucking it in.

By: R. C. White

R. C. White — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 18:33:51 +0000

Tom, in my part of Oklahoma, “barrow” words were often pronounced “bar”, especially when I was a boy (born in 1935). Other “arrow” words rhymed: We played with “bows and ars”, used a “har” (harrow) to rake our plowed fields; ate the “bonemar” (marrow) out of beef bones; and drove some pretty “nar” (narrow) roads with bar ditches on either side. And carried dirt and other stuff in “wheelbars”. To us, “borrow ditch”, “barrow ditch” and “bar ditch” would sound pretty much the same.

By: Tom Sylvester

Tom Sylvester — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 00:22:54 +0000

I also am an engineer. I have heard the old horse drawn skips or skids were also called “barrows” similar to wheelbarrows. The skid could be lowered (or the wheel raised) to pick up a load. When full, the wheel was than lowered and the horses could haul it to the to the mound between the ditches for the roadway. Barrow ditches thence were the places that the barrows gathered their material.

So I guess you can say that the barrow borrowed the dirt from the barrow (borrow) ditch to make the barrow (mound) for the road.

By: Sharon R. Flores

Sharon R. Flores — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 14:01:49 +0000

hahaha, don’t know why I woke up at 3:00 this AM and remembered my dad calling it a bar ditch (as in, We found you in a bar ditch; that’s why you’re our daughter). Yep, I’m from Texas. Thanks for the memories!

By: John W. Bales

John W. Bales — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 14:59:31 +0000

When I was a child growing up in Texas in the 1950s, I asked my grandmother Olivia Bozeman Adams, who was born in Texas in 1891, why the ditches beside a road were called bar ditches. She explained immediately that when communities built a road they dug two ditches using dredges and mules and piled the removed soil in the middle, trampelled it down and added gravel if available. She recalled that they were originally called ‘borry’ ditches by the people making the roads in her community when she was a child. Many Texas still pronounce the word ‘borrow’ as ‘borry.’