America's Highways 1776–1976: A History of the Federal-Aid Program/Part 1/Chapter 2

by Federal Highway Administration

 

Layout 2

Early
Turnpike
Era

In all of the States, a long and severe depression followed independence. Recovery was hampered by the wretched condition of the roads, which had become practically impassable in many places from lack of maintenance during the war.

Postwar Recovery Generates Increased Road Traffic
Business began to pick up about 1787, and with the increase in trade came a rapid increase in road traffic, especially near the larger cities. The feeble efforts of the local authorities were not equal to keeping the roads in repair under this traffic, so there was widespread agitation for State assistance to help maintain the principal roads. The debt-burdened State governments met this challenge by appealing to private capital for the funds to build better highways. They chartered private turnpike^{[N 1]} companies, conferring on them authority to build roads and charge tolls to the public for their use. The first of these companies, chartered by Virginia in 1785, built a turnpike road from Alexandria, on the Potomac Eiver, westward to the mountains near Berryville. However, the first to be completed for any considerable distance, and one of the most successful financially, was in Pennsylvania, between Philadelphia and Lancaster.^[2]

Transportation Plan Proposed for Pennsylvania
In February 1791, The Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation submitted to the Pennsylvania Legislature what may be the earliest statewide transportation plan in U.S. history. This plan proposed that the Legislature appoint a Board of Commissioners with power to decide the locations of the principal roads in the State and determine which should be improved by turnpike companies and which ought to be made or repaired at public cost. The board would then have the authority to advertise and award contracts to build and operate the turnpikes, and also to employ persons to repair those roads deemed unsuitable for turnpikes. Similarly, the board would have authority to contract for the construction and operation of toll canals or to make other navigation improvements at public expense.^[3]

An important feature of the transportation plan was the voluntary relinquishment by the State for a stated number of years of its right to charter parallel competing facilities that would destroy or diminish the income or revenue of turnpikes or toll navigations already established.

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1. Originally, a “turnpike” was a long pole or pike which barred the traveler’s way at each tollgate. After he paid the required toll, the pike was turned or swung out of the traveler’s path.^[1] “Turnpike” eventually became a synonym for any high-class, stone-surfaced road.

Wayside inn on Lancaster Road.

The Legislature was not ready, at that time, to confer such vast powers on an administrative body. However, it did announce its readiness to subsidize road and canal building in sparsely settled parts of the State with liberal appropriations of public money and to incorporate companies “for the gradual and progressive improvement of roads and waters where the tolls would be sufficient to recompense the subscribers or stockholders, and the charge would fall, according to justice, upon those who were to be benefitted, in proportion to the use they might make of such roads and waters.”^[4]

Under this policy, the Legislature, in April 1791, appropriated 36,160 Pennsylvania pounds to be expended under the direction of the Governor and Council for some 68 road and navigation improvements scattered all over the state.^[5] Later, in April 1793, the Legislature authorized the Governor to incorporate the Conewago Canal Company to construct a lock canal around the Conewago Falls of the Susquehanna River at public expense, to be “opened as a public highway and for public use, forever . . . free of toll, and any and every other charge whatsoever. . . .”^[6]

In September 1791, the Legislature authorized the incorporation of the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Company to build a toll canal between those rivers. Two other acts in April 1792 established the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road Company and the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal Navigation Company. Other turnpike and canal acts followed in later years, all modeled on the earlier ones.

The charters granted to the turnpike and canal companies under these acts were practically identical—in fact, both canals and turnpikes were considered to be “highways.” Both were regulated transportation monopolies granted by specific acts of the State Legislature. These acts specified the termini and general route of the road or canal, set minimum engineering standards and conferred the right of eminent domain for taking necessary right-of-way and road materials. The companies were authorized to collect tolls at rates specified in the acts, but these rates were subject to renegotiation at intervals. The companies were required to keep their facilities in good order at all times. Turnpike acts set load limits and minimum tire widths for vehicles using the roads to protect the companies from destructive overloading by their patrons, especially during the spring thaw.

Inn near Brandywine, Pa., on Lancaster Road.

The Lancaster Road—Prototype Turnpike
The charter for the Philadelphia to Lancaster Road required that it be laid out 50 feet wide between fences, of which at least 21 feet “shall be made an artificial road, which shall be bedded with wood, stone, gravel, or any other hard substance, well compacted together, a sufficient depth to secure a solid foundation to the same; and the said road shall be faced with gravel, or stone pounded, or other small hard substance, in such manner as to secure a firm, and, as near as the materials will admit, an even surface. . .”^[7] The gradient was limited to an angle of 4 degrees with the horizon. (This is the equivalent of a grade of 7 percent.) The Company had no trouble selling its stock to eager investors at $300 per share. “I have never seen men,” an eyewitness wrote, “so wet with sweat in the harvest field as some were in the crowd today who subscribed to the turnpike road.”^[8] Construction began in February 1793, and was completed for the full length of 62 miles in a little under 3 years—a remarkable engineering achievement for the period. The cost was $465,000, or an average of $7,500 per mile.^[9]

The Company collected tolls at 13 points along the road at rates varying from 2½ cents per vehicle-mile for stages and coaches drawn by 2 horses to 5 cents per mile for 4-horse freight wagons with 4-inch tires. Vehicles with wider tires could travel for lower rates, and a horse and rider could travel 10 miles for 6 cents.

The Lancaster Pike did not return more than 2 percent of the invested capital for the first 5 years after it was opened, but, as the western part of the State developed, the profits rose until in some years they reached 15 percent, the maximum permitted by the charter.

Conestoga wagon "Philadelphia to Pittsburg 20 days."

Conestoga wagon “Philadelphia to Pittsburg 20 days.”

Rapid Spread of Toll Roads and Canals
After 1800, most of the States adopted toll financing for main roads and canals, while retaining the old statute labor system for local improvements. By 1808, Connecticut had chartered 50 turnpike companies, which had completed 770 miles of roads. In New York, 67 companies, capitalized at over $5 million, were chartered before 1807 to build 3,071 miles of turnpike roads, and 21 companies were chartered to build toll bridges.^[10] By 1828, Pennsylvania had 3,110 miles of turnpike roads, costing $8 million.^[11]

The turnpike companies at first concentrated their efforts on the main roads between cities where traffic was heaviest, and since most of these cities were along the Atlantic coast, the coastal highway (now U.S. Route 1) was the first to be improved over any considerable distance. The Delaware River Bridge Company built a substantial bridge at Trenton, N. J., in 1806, and by 1812 the New York-Philadelphia road was stone-surfaced the full distance between those cities. These, and improvements to the coastal highway in other States, came just in time to save the country from a severe transportation crisis during the War of 1812, when coastal shipping was blockaded by the British Fleet. During the war, from 10 to 20 freight wagons arrived daily at Charleston, South Carolina, from cities as far away as Boston.^[12]

The Transmountain Roads
The larger seaboard States from New York to North Carolina had extensive areas of western lands which they were anxious to settle and develop. Also, the seaport cities were eager for the trade such development would produce. There was, therefore, a strong sentiment to push good roads westward over the Allegheny Mountain barrier. Four main transmountain roads resulted.

After completion of the Lancaster Pike to Lancaster, the Pennsylvania Legislature granted charters for extending it westward to Pittsburgh. The State subsidized this “Pennsylvania Road” by subscribing to the stock of some of the companies.

Primitive method of breaking stone on toll road.

Primitive method of breaking stone on toll road.

In New York the turnpikes developed without State subsidies, and many of the turnpike roads were controlled by large landowners who sometimes were more interested in selling land than in providing transportation. However, by 1812 New York had a well-developed turnpike system extending from the Massachusetts boundary to Lake Erie.

Maryland chartered several turnpike companies in the 1820’s to connect Baltimore with the Cumberland Road (the National Road), then being built by the Federal Government with congressional appropriations; and was thus prepared to cash in on the Federal investment when the Cumberland Road reached the Ohio River.

The Erie Canal.

The Erie Canal.

Virginia incorporated the Northwestern Turnpike in 1831 as a State-owned enterprise, with the Governor as president of the board of directors, to build a turnpike road from Winchester to “some point on the Ohio River to be situated by the principal engineer.” The principal engineer was Captain Claudius Crozet, formerly professor of engineering at West Point, and perhaps the ablest road engineer in America at this time. This road was completed to Parkersburg on the Ohio River in 1838, at a cost of $400,000.^[13]

The standards and costs of the many turnpikes varied widely. Some were graded and ditched, but unsurfaced. Most were surfaced with gravel or pounded stone. The pounded stone surface was very expensive because all stone had to be quarried and broken by hand labor.^{[N 1]} After 1846 some roads were surfaced with wooden planks laid on heavy sills. Average construction costs for turnpikes varied between $550 per mile to as high as $14,000 per mile.^[14]

The turnpike movement eventually spread into all the States, and by 1850 there were hundreds of companies operating thousands of miles of roads and canals. These contributed tremendously to the States’ internal development by opening new lands to settlement, by reducing the cost of haulage from the farms to the markets, and by stimulating the development of industries. Indeed, the construction of these privately financed public works was, itself, a major industry in the early 1800’s.

At first, only citizens of the United States were allowed to own road and canal stock, but this restriction was later waived to attract European investment capital. Some States subsidized turnpike and canal companies by tax exemptions and by purchasing shares in the ventures. The charter granted by Kentucky to the Ohio Canal Company, for example, not only authorized the Governor to subscribe for 1,000 shares on behalf of the State, but also extended the privilege to the United States Government and to five other States bordering on the Ohio River.

With certain notable exceptions, such as the Erie Canal, the profits on toll road and canal investments were modest at best. Most of the charters contained provisions for reducing tolls when profits reached a certain level, usually 12 or 15 percent per year. The Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company’s charter required that when profits exceeded 15 percent per annum 1 percent of the same shall be reserved “for the establishment of schools, and the encouragement of the arts and sciences. . . .”^[15]

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1. The first practical mechanical stone crusher was patented by Eli Whitney Blake, in 1858.

Roads and Canals Coexisted

Generally, toll roads and toll canals were not in direct competition with each other over the same or nearby routes, and could coexist as elements of an expanding transportation system. Because of their more restrictive grade lines, canals followed more indirect routes and were longer than turnpikes. Passing the boats through the locks was a slow and tedious business. Consequently, average canal speeds seldom exceeded 2 or 3 miles per hour, as compared to 4 to 6 miles per hour on stagecoaches. The coach lines, therefore, got most of the passengers and U.S. mail contracts, and the turnpike freighters retained the short-haul and the fast-freight business. On the other hand, one horse pulling a canal boat could move as much freight as eight 4-horse wagon teams on a road.^{[N 1]} This made for a very low toll rate, so the canals got the heavy freight if the shipper had a choice of carriers.

Only where a very large proportion of the total movement was through freight and the turnpikes and canals had common terminals did they come into direct and damaging competition. This happened when the Erie Canal was opened between Albany and Buffalo in 1825 and the Pennsylvania river-canal navigation system was opened between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in 1834. In both cases, the heavy freight to and from the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley switched to the canals and most of the wagon freighters went out of business, but the stagecoach lines continued to prosper. The toll roads consequently suffered a drastic decrease in their total income.

Improved Engineering and Administrative Methods
The toll roads were built by contractors, or by hired laborers supervised by trained roadbuilders. Their construction was thus a notable departure from the long-established feudal custom of building roads with inefficient statute labor directed by amateur supervisors. To meet the standards in their charters, the turnpike companies had to hire people with some understanding of civil engineering to lay the roads out; and, on the whole, the turnpike roads were well located, and well built.

The earlier turnpikes were paved according to the recommendations of J. P. M. Trésaguet, Director General of the French roads from 1775 to 1785, with whose work educated Americans, such as Benjamin Franklin, were well acquainted. Trésaguet insisted on an adequate right-of-way for his roads and provided generous side ditches to carry away surface water that might otherwise stand on the road and soften it. On a crowned and rolled subgrade, his roadbuilders placed a layer of heavy foundation stones, laid on edge, with the interstices packed solidly with smaller stones rammed in place by hammering. Above this course, by hand, they placed successive layers of broken stone, course by course, compacted and filled so that the stones interlocked with each other. The top 3 inches were of hard, specially selected stone, broken with hammers to walnut-size at the quarry and hauled to the road to form the wearing course.^[17]

The carriageways of Trésaguet’s roads were 18 feet wide and about 10 inches thick. Most of the early American turnpikes were at least this wide, a common width being 20 feet. The Lancaster Pike was at least 24 feet throughout and in places even wider.

Trésaguet’s greatest contribution to highway administration was his insistence on prompt and incessant maintenance of every mile of road by trained and adequately paid workmen. The system of maintenance he established made France’s roads the best in the world for two generations.

Laying stone foundation in Massachusetts. Although macadam roads were in use, as late as 1898 the Tresaguet roadbuilding method could be found.

Laying stone foundation in Massachusetts. Although macadam roads were in use, as late as 1898 the Tresaguet roadbuilding method could be found.

After about 1820, the ideas of the Scotsman, John L. McAdam, who was responsible for the good roads around Bristol, England, dominated American road building. McAdam didn’t believe in massive foundation courses—he asserted that the native soil, alone, was what supported the road and the traffic upon it and that the function of the road crust was only to protect the basement soil from wetting and abrasion. His roads, 6 to 10 inches thick, were made of angular broken stones, all passing a 2-inch ring and packed by traffic until they interlocked into a dense mass. The first American road built according to McAdam’s principles was the Boonsborough to Hagerstown Turnpike in Maryland, completed in 1822.^[18]

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1. In 1807 Robert Fulton wrote, “. . . on a road of the best kind, four horses, and sometimes five, are necessary to transport only three tons. On a canal one horse will draw twenty-five tons, and thus perform the work of forty horses.”^[16]

Rolling stone with steam roller near Westfleld, Mass. in 1898.

Rolling stone with steam roller near Westfleld, Mass. in 1898.

McAdam was primarily an administrator, rather than an engineer. Like Trésaguet, he insisted on thorough and continuous maintenance. He also advocated payment of adequate salaries to attract good men who would make roadbuilding a career.

As might be expected, the administration of turnpikes varied widely from company to company, depending on the quality of the management, the amount of toll-paying traffic, and how well the roads were originally laid out and constructed. Many were underfinanced, and failures and reorganizations were frequent. The standard of maintenance was not always as high as it should have been, especially for those roads that were not making much money. But on the whole, the turnpikes were a vast improvement over both the miserable roads and tracks that preceded them and the equally bad local roads still under township control.

Early Railroads Were Regarded as Public Highways
In 1808 Benjamin Latrobe, the distinguished architect and civil engineer, and one of the designers of the U.S. Capitol, summarized the prospects of railroads as a national mode of transportation in these words:

. . . railroads are out of the question as to the carriage of common articles. Railroads leading from the coal mines to the margin of the James River, might answer their expense, or others from the marble quarries near Philadelphia to the Schuylkill. But these are the only instances, within my knowledge, in which they at present might be employed.

There is, however, a use for railroads as a temporary means to overcome the most difficult parts of artificial navigation ; and for this they are invaluable. . . .^[19]

Latrobe’s objection to railroads concerned the specialized iron-wheeled carriages required to travel on them; these were too expensive for the average farmer or shipper to own, and also unsuitable for operation on the common roads. Because of this restriction, only specialized roads hauling large quantities of bulk freight, such as coal, from a single source would be able to collect sufficient tolls from traffic to pay out their construction cost. At this time, there were no railroads in the United States and only a few in Europe. The carriages or wagons were pulled by horses. On a good railroad, one horse could pull four wagons of 2 tons each.^[20]

England’s first commercial railroad, opened in 1820, was originally intended to be operated with horses. Even later when the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad was chartered in 1828, it too was intended primarily to haul freight by horse power and included a provision in its charter that the owners could exact toll of all persons who might put vehicles on the road for transporting goods. However, this provision was required of few shippers because this railroad adopted steam propulsion a year later.

About the same time in Pennsylvania, the State built a railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia and licensed 20 different companies to run their horse-drawn cars over it.^[21] In Indiana, the chief engineer of the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad recommended in 1837 that the State furnish steam motive power for its railroads, “leaving the care for the conveyance of freight and passengers to be furnished by individuals or companies, from whom the state will exact the proper toll for the use of the road, and for the motive power.”^[22]

In their early days, railroads were regarded in the same light as turnpikes and canals, to be used by and for the benefit of the public. The theory that a railroad was private property to be used exclusively by the owners and with which they could do as they pleased, prevailed for only a very short time.

Rapid Extension of Railroads in the United States
In the United States, the first charters for commercial railroads were granted in 1827 to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to operate in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and to the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad for operation in South Carolina. Other States followed soon afterward, issuing charters for short railroads, few exceeding 100 miles in length. Up to the end of 1830, only 41 miles of railroad were constructed. This increased to 918 miles by the end of 1835 and to 2,797 by 1840. In 1856, 18,400 miles were in operation, and by 1860 railroads were being built at the rate of 5,000 miles per year, with 31,000 miles in operation.^[23]

Steadily, this multitude of short lines was consolidated into more efficient systems by financial mergers and by standardization of gauges, so that long shipments were possible without changing railroads or cars.

Only a very few of the earliest railroads were planned for operation by animal power. After about 1835 practically all of the American railroads were made heavy enough to support steam engines, and, to accommodate the higher speeds possible with steam propulsion, were laid out with much less curvature and easier gradients than was customary for turnpike roads. At first, operating speeds were only about 8 to 10 miles per hour but these doubled by 1840.

These higher speeds, plus the ability to haul large tonnages at low cost, gave the railroads a tremendous competitive edge over both the turnpikes and the canals. For topographic reasons, the railroads located their lines parallel or close to the previously established turnpikes and canals, thus, coming into direct competition with them for most of their length. This competition was ruinous to the freight wagon and stagecoach companies which eventually lost not only their passengers and freight, but also their mail contracts to the rails.

Decline of the Turnpikes
The National Pike, or Cumberland Road, had entered upon an era of great prosperity when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad reached Cumberland, Maryland, in 1842. Eleven years later, when the railroad reached the Ohio River at Wheeling, the horse transportation companies went into bankruptcy. The same blight spread to the great Pennsylvania wagon road to the west when the Pennsylvania Railroad was completed to Pittsburgh in 1854. Roadside businesses, which depended on the road traffic, such as inns and stables, shriveled and dried up. With no revenue coming in, the turnpike companies stopped maintenance and the proud turnpikes became so rough that travelers refused to pay toll.^[24]

Milepost 10 miles west of Philadelphia on the old Lancaster Turnpike.

Milepost 10 miles west of Philadelphia on the old Lancaster Turnpike.

At the eastern end of the Pennsylvania Road, the Lancaster Turnpike, once the finest road in America, fell steadily into decay. In 1880 the company served notice on the township supervisors of its intent to abandon 17 miles of road. These sections were then “disturnpiked” and returned to public control. A little later, the company sold 35 miles of road to other companies for $40,000, to be used, partly at least, for a railroad bed, and in 1899 the company sold all of its remaining interest in the turnpike for $10 a share—one-thirtieth of what it sold for 100 years before. The Lancaster Turnpike Road Company was dissolved in February 1902.^[25]

With variation in detail, hundreds of other turnpikes met the same fate as the Lancaster Pike, most of them eventually reverting to the local authorities for maintenance.

Paradoxically, as the older through turnpikes collapsed, new charters were being issued for feeder roads to the railroads. Thus, the number of new charters did not diminish greatly until about 1875.^[26] Many of the newly chartered feeders enjoyed a measure of prosperity and maintained themselves until condemned or bought out by the States or local governments in the early 20th century.

REFERENCES

1. C. Boeth, Mankind on the Move (Automotive Safety Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1969) p. 8.
2. A. Rose, Historic American Highways—Public Roads of the Past (American Association of State Highway Officials, Washington, D.C., 1953) p. 37.
3. A. Gallatin, Report op the Secretary of the Treasury on Roads and Canals, S. Doc. No. 250, 10th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 842 (1808).
4. Id., p. 843.
5. Id., pp. 863, 864.
6. Id., p. 851.
7. Id., p. 895.
8. J. W. Brooks, A History of American Highways, Sect. 2, p. 5 (unpublished work in Department of Transportation Library).
9. A. Gallatin, supra, note 3, p. 738.
10. Id., p. 737.
11. G. R. Chatburn, Highways and Highway Transportation (Thos. Y. Crowell, New York, 1923) p. 62.
12. A. Rose, supra, note 2, pp. 46, 47.
13. Id., pp. 56, 57.
14. A. Gallatin, supra, note 3, p. 737.
15. Id., p. 851.
16. Id., p. 918.
17. A. Rose, supra, note 2, p. 40.
18. Id., p. 53.
19. A. Gallatin, supra, note 3, p. 917.
20. Id.
21. G. R. Chatburn, supra, note 11, pp. 101, 102.
22. Id., pp. 106, 107.
23. Id., p. 108.
24. A. Rose, supra, note 2, p. 66.
25. A. B. Hulbert, Historic Highways of America, Vol. 11 (Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, 1904) pp. 91–96.
26. A. Rose, supra, note 2, p. 72.