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.”[1]
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.[2] 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. . . .”[3]
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. . .”[4] The gradient was limited to an angle of 4 degrees with the horizon. (This is the equivalent of a grade of 7 percent.)
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