Where did the term "Bar Ditch" originate and what does it really mean? To me, a ditch alongside a road is simply "a ditch". I met people in the past (often from Oklahoma) who always called it a "Bar Ditch". For some reason, I never had the opportunity to ask about it.

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Comes from barrow or borrow, the dirt is 'borrowed' to raise the roadbed.
Then there is Bar Pit, where a hole is dug and the dirt is used to raise another area, road, building site, etc.
'A ditch' would be dug to drain or divert water. It wouldn't necessarily have any connection to a road.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

I believe the original terminology was the "barrow" ditch, over time becoming "bar" ditch in common use.

I've heard it used by Forest Service to indicate a ditch to divert (or "bar") rainwater near a culvert (to divert erosion).

I know we commonly use "Borrow" pits to describe pools adjacent a river where the road need raising. Became spawning grounds for predators to prey on salmon.

When fighting wildfires and building firelines with handtools on the side of mountains, we put in "water bars" every so often to do as BearBio says, to divert rainwater from causing erosion.

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"Life is short, hunt hard"

I thought it was the ditch you did not want to fall into upon leaving the "BAR"...

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NULLI SECUNDUS

Grew up in NE Oklahoma, and always heard and used the term bar ditch. I occasionally wondered where the term came from. Definitely wasn't referring to water being barred from running, as they are just big ditches running alongside the road with nothing to impede or slow the flow. Of course, our cattle also watered from ponds that were dug in the pastures, not tanks as I always hear out here. Maybe it's just an Okie thing.

Yup, always used the term Drainage Ditch for the ones intended to divert water, and Bar Ditch for the deep ones alongside major roadways that were a source for road bed material...

Used in a sentence.....

'Stupid dog jumped into the drainage ditch and got covered in mud,"

"Stupid drunk ran his car into the bar ditch and flipped it,"

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Even older, even crankier....

Down South man made waterholes of water are called 'pools' or 'ponds'.
Farther west they become tanks.
The great Ben Johnson (from Oklahoma) went fishing in a tank in Last Picture Show. But that movie locale was West Texas!

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

In Iowa and Illinois we call them 'Borrow Pits' because we have to dig a hole to get enough dirt to make highway overpasses for example. If you drive this country enough you'll see lots of them. Not all local dialects turn borrow into bar.

We built a private club shooting range here a few years ago. The excavator crew had to dig one helluva borrow pit to make 20 ft. high berms. These holes normally fill up with water unless it forgets to rain as it does some years here.

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Bob.
SWCA 1821

In highway construction there are usually two major types of material to deal with, Borrow and Fill. It makes sense then that a "Borrow ditch" is a ditch along the road when they removed the material to elevate the roadway with fill.

College friends from Texas called those man made water holes "tanks". In South Dakota we just called them "dug outs".

We call them tanks in Arizona, too.

I grew up in Georgia and South Carolina and we called the ditch along the road a ditch. And we called the pits ponds instead of tanks. Tanks were big metal things.

I've always known it to mean disengaging from an undesirable female and sneaking out the back door of the bar that you found her in.

We urban types called them ponds,the rural guys called them tanks.

Bar ditches are most often larger than regular ditches, like the ones cut by a roadgrader.
You generally see bar ditches where you need the dirt to raise the roadbed.
Down South, I have seen folks fishing in bar ditches.
Especially down in Louisiana.

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I'll admit I've never heard the term bar ditch.
I worked on some road crews when I was young including a 'ditching crew'.
A road side ditch was just that,,maybe embelished to a drainage ditch.

A pond is a pond if it's naturally formed. If on a farm a pond is artificially formed so as the make a watering hole for live stock, it's generally called a 'farm pond'. Blasting and/or bulldozing were the usual methods. But just daming up a natural spring down hill from the source was common too.
Never heard a metal tank called a pond.
I don't get out much...

Interesting how terms and descriptions differ around the country.
Thanks for the education. I was thinking it might be doc84's deffinition. A technique actually,,seemed logical to me.

I've heard of 'borrow pits', but 'bar pit' and all that other stuff I've never heard in my life. Probably because I'm on the southeast coast. To me a bar pit is a hole you dig to catch a bar in.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Some of the best fishing around amigo.
We call them borrow pits.

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Forum consigliere

Hmmm,

The only Bar Ditch I've ever heard of is when a fella or a gal ditch's the person they are not interested in hanging with at a Club or Bar.

If you look closely you might find some old "tars" in the pit.

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BTW: A barrow is an above ground grave mound. In Ireland, they are where the sidh live. Often (usually) considered haunted.