Private toll roads shaped and accommodated trade and migration routes, leaving social and political imprints on the communities that debated and supported them. Private road building came and went in waves throughout the 19th century and across the country. All told, between 2,500 and 3,200...

The years 1800-1830 are sometimes designated the turnpike era, since in the 1830's canals and railroads began eclipsing the old wagon roads. Thereafter, long distance travel went by water and rail, but the journey often began on one of the many short toll roads feeding the system. This paper...

The new roads would end rural isolation, speed commerce, improve wives and daughters, increase church attendance, bring wealth to investors. So said the promotors. The autors examine the New York origins of plank roads and analyze their giddy rise and traumatic decline. Daniel Klein is an...

From 1847 to 1853 New Yorkers built more than 3,500 miles of wooden roads. Financed primarily by residents of declining rural townships, plank roads were seen as a means of linking isolated areas to the canal and railroad network. A broad range of individuals invested in the roads, suggesting...

Turnpikes promised a solution to the problem of bad roads, but private management of highways was a startling innovation. some people opposed the idea of turnpikes as exemplifying two betes noires of the post-Revolutionary period, the private corporation and aristrocracy. Much of the...

From 1847 to 1853 New Yorkers built more than 3,500 miles of wooden roads. Financed primarily by residents of declining rural townships, plank roads were seen as a means of linking isolated areas to the canal and railroad network. A broad range of individuals invested in the roads, suggesting...

The importance of canals and railroads has hardly grown "deeper and deeper," but at least they had their day. As for plank roads, most people have never heard of them. The historical obscurity of plank roads reflects the general scholarly neglect of nineteenth-century roads. Excellent work has...

The years 1800-1830 are sometimes designated "the turnpike era," since in the 1830s canals and railroads began eclipsing the old wagon roads. Its true that long distance travel went by water and rail, but the journey often began on one of the many short toll roads feeding the system. This paper...