Have you ever spotted a small concrete post beside an old trail or forgotten road and wondered why it was there? It may look like nothing more than a weathered piece of concrete, but markers like these can preserve clues about roads and transportation routes that disappeared decades ago. In some cases, a marker bearing “R/W” may indicate a right-of-way boundary—the official corridor reserved for a road or other transportation use.

A right-of-way marker doesn’t necessarily show where the pavement once ended. Instead, it can mark the boundary of a larger transportation corridor, helping surveyors, engineers, and property owners understand where the designated road land began or ended. The fascinating part is that the marker can survive long after the road itself has vanished. Pavement disappears, vegetation takes over, and an old roadway can eventually look like nothing more than an ordinary path through the woods.

If you find one near an old roadbed, look for other clues. Straight or unusually level ground, old gravel, drainage ditches, culverts, embankments, or additional markers may help reveal what once existed there. But don’t assume every small, bumper-like concrete marker was related to a road—different markers served different purposes, and historical maps, surveys, and local records can provide much stronger confirmation.

That’s what makes forgotten infrastructure so fascinating. A simple concrete post may be connected to surveying, property boundaries, road construction, and generations of everyday travel. The road may be gone and the landscape completely changed, yet the marker can still quietly point toward the past.
And sometimes, the smallest clues are the ones that make you stop and wonder:

What happened here all those years ago?