There were no dirt roads in the rural northwest Ohio region where I grew up (on a farm) within my memory (which means back to the mid-1950’s).
Based on the old family farms I’ve visited, the house was located on a relatively high spot. The reason for this is not just visibility, it was for drainage; you don’t want the house at the bottom of a hill where water and mud will collect after a rainstorm.
You’d also want the house set back from the road somewhat for ventilation. In the pre-air conditioning era, you wanted enough breeze for good airflow, and obviously you didn’t want the dust from a dirt or gravel road if you could avoid it.
You’d also want good access to the outbuildings.
Most roads didn’t follow the high ground, they tended to trail along the lower, easier to walk areas.
Even in flatland areas, it would make sense to put the house 50-100 back from the road.
*"Well, I don’t know EllieMae. I’m sorry about the washing and all, but the way I figure things; in northern Minnesota for 4 months of the year the road is covered in snow and 4 months it’s covered in mud. Haymaking season is just a couple of weeks. It’s not like we’re living on the median strip of Interstate 35W.
How you think our cousins survive down South, where all that pollen and dust blows off the corn when the fields are fallow, during flowering and when it’s harvested?"*
Um, wtf? There are dirt roads down here in the South.
I didn’t say that there are no dirt roads in some parts of the country. I said that there are rural areas, like the one where I grew up, where there are no dirt roads.
[Moderator Note]
penultima thule, the purpose of GQ is to provide factual information. These posts are inappropriate for this forum. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
[Moderator Note]
Stranger, I’ve asked you before: if you have a problem with someone’s post, report it rather than taking it upon yourself to attack them. No warning issued. I’d say “don’t do this again” but that seems to be futile. All I’ll say is that I would very much appreciate if you would try to do a better job of staying within GQ rules.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
It could be we need to turn the question around: why are non-farmhouses so close to the road? Roads after all are dirty, noisy, and dangerous. Maybe people in general would prefer to have houses farther from the road. But most non-farmers live on relatively small pieces of property where you can’t get too far away from the road. Farmers have more property so they’re able to get farther back.
OOh I can have a go at that =)
Back in the day, fancy houses tended to have larger decorative front yards, and lovely porches to sit upon. The house work of laundry, truck gardening for the kitchen and the chicken yard would be in the back - out of sight and out of mind. If you look at most victorian era houses, any carriage house/garage or outbuilding would be in the back. The family would sit at their leisure in the front of the house. That is also why the ‘servants entrance in the rear’ and the kitchen and utility rooms tended to be in the back of the house, and the parlor/formal living room tended to be in the front. All about appearances.
Then Levitown era started, and they put a house on exactly the same amount of land for each house, and a minimum amount of space, cramming them in to get as many houses in a subdivision as possible. No room for deep front yards, and oddly enough the levitown home I visited had roughly the same amount of yard front and back.
The long laneway in winter isn’t a huge issue - tractors make mighty huge snowplows. Just like they make mighty big lawnmowers in summer! 
I think shelterbelts are another part of it too - it’s rare to find a farm around here without a good scattering of trees surrounding the house.
There’s another part I’m wondering about, seeing as they are building a twinned highway by where I grew up. The farther back your buildings are, the easier it is for both you and the Department of Transportation if a new road needs to be built. I mean, you can’t plan for this stuff 50 years in advance, but it’s better to lose a bit of the front of your property than having to move your house.
Nothing at all odd about it. The builders wanted to separate the houses as much as possible. The obvious solution was to set the house as close to the middle of the yard as possible.