This is an 1899 model Aveling & Porter steam roller, used to compress and level road surfaces. Aveling & Porter were an English manufacturing company that, in the 19th century, made more than half of all steam rollers sold in the world. This may have been owned by the town of Deerfield, Massachusetts – there was a warrant on the 1898 town meeting to appropriate $250 to purchase a “road machine.” In 1899, there were no internal combustion engines capable of moving as massive a piece of equipment as this, but there soon would be. Despite this, Aveling & Porter continued making steam engine road rollers well into the 1920s.

This photograph comes from the Howes Brothers collection of photographs. They were from Ashfield, Massachusetts, and created more than 20,000 images of New England rural life from 1890 to around 1910.