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.”[1] 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.[2]
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.”
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.[3] By 1828, Pennsylvania had 3,110 miles of turnpike roads, costing $8 million.[4]
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.[5]
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.
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 appropria-
10
- ↑ J. W. Brooks, A History of American Highways, Sect. 2, p. 5 (unpublished work in Department of Transportation Library).
- ↑ A. Gallatin, supra, note 3, p. 738.
- ↑ Id., p. 737.
- ↑ G. R. Chatburn, Highways and Highway Transportation (Thos. Y. Crowell, New York, 1923) p. 62.
- ↑ A. Rose, supra, note 2, pp. 46, 47.
