From Brooklyn Centre Wiki

A Corduroy road was the early settler's attempt to make the muddy and sometimes impassable byways more suitable for travel. Logs were placed side by side and perpendicular to the direction of travel. This road could then be used as is, or covered with dirt to fill in the spaces between the logs and smooth out the surface. Since wagon wheels would inevitably leave ruts in a normal dirt road, this was a vast improvement for the times.