A togher, as these bog roads are known in Irish archaeology, was not simply a track but a piece of deliberate infrastructure: longitudinal runners placed along the ground, sticky clay packed purposely between them, and then large oak planks laid transversely across the top and pinned in place with sharpened wooden pegs. At nearly a kilometre in length and over a metre deep through the peat, the Derraghan More togher was a substantial undertaking by any measure.

The road first came to light in 1957, when Rynne excavated the site and recorded its roughly east-west orientation. Decades later, in 1989, Barry Raftery returned to what remained after extensive peat-milling had destroyed much of the structure. He uncovered a surviving section of about fourteen metres in length and up to four and a half metres wide, which revealed a substructure of brushwood running to a depth of nearly half a metre beneath the planking. Dendrochronological dating, which uses the growth rings of preserved timber to determine the year trees were felled, placed the construction at 156 plus or minus nine years BC, squarely in the Irish Iron Age. That date, and the method of construction, closely mirrors the famous Corlea Trackway elsewhere in County Longford, a road now partially preserved and displayed at the Corlea Interpretive Centre. A further inspection in 1999 by Dunne found part of the togher resting on a band of sandy and gravelly material, suggesting the builders made use of whatever firmer ground was available within the bog to anchor their work.