He obligingly answered our questions about the road building boom in which his family had a pioneering role.
His father entered the road building business in 1895. The family lived at Arcola, and the Lough firm’s first work was in that area. Early jobs were mostly brick paving outlined with sandstone curb which was followed by the use of concrete curb and gutter which the firm used first at Paris, Illinois.
After considerable work in Central Illinois, including paving, sewers, and sidewalks in Arcola, Paris Shelbyville and Newman, William Lough was attracted to Marion in 1908 by an opportunity to bid on pavement of the Public Square.
He was outbid by the local firm of Hoffman and Townsend which laid brick pavement around the courthouse and one block of each of the main streets leading from it.
But the following year, in 1909, when South Market Street was paved from a point near where the library is now located was up for bidding, Lough returned to Marion and won the contract.
Buying the two-story frame house at the corner of South Market and East Thorn Streets, the contractor finished it’s outside surface with concrete stucco which has lasted through the years as a sort of reminding symbol of the works which the firm was to create in concrete during the more than 50 years that it was to hold a prominent place in the construction business in addition to far-flung activities as a road builder. The Lough firm built sidewalks, sewer plants, water plants and manufactured concrete burial vaults.
Fred O. Lough recalled the method by which Marion built the first concrete sidewalks which replaced the wooden walks that were originally in use along the streets.
“The first sidewalks were privately built”, he said, “We laid the concrete according to the city’s grade and specifications, and the property owner paid the cost. Since not all the property owners wanted to pay for building sidewalks at the same time, there would be places that didn’t have walks. Later the city let contracts for sidewalks.”
Marion street paving contracts which went to the Lough firm included a paving district in the southwest part of town, North Van Buren Street, North Madison, North Court and North Buchanan Streets and Thorn Place.
One of the first road contracts was for a narrow pavement from Marion three mile north along what is now Route 37 to Halfway, and then a pavement 10 feet wide toward Crab Orchard.
Lough also built the narrow pavement which extended a few miles westward from Marion on what later became old Route 13. The early pavements didn’t go many miles out from the county seat and were wide enough for only one vehicle so that one wagon or automobile had to get two wheels off the concrete when meeting another vehicle.
As the road building boom grew, the Lough firm reached out for its share of the construction. After paving the courthouse square in Vienna in 1928, the Loughs moved their equipment into Missouri where they built the first section of Lindbergh Boulevard in St. Louis in 1929-30.
In the years that followed they built state highways in the vicinity of Mt. Vernon, Sesser, Whittington, Dale, Broughton and other Southern Illinois cities. The founder of the firm was active in the business until his death in 1935. His sons, Fred and the Leland Lough carried on the business through the 1950’s until their retirement.
The first Marion sewage disposal plant built in the early 1920’s and a contract for concrete work at the Marion Water plant in 1956 were among their accomplishments.
Other Marion contractors engaged in building pavements included the Mitchell Contracting Company founded by the late Everett Mitchell.”
(Glances at Life, Homer Butler article from February 1971)