Turnpike

“ The turnpike system continued to develop with continual changes through three or four generations. It survived the competition of the railroads. It was vastly improved by the new local legislation of from forty to twenty years ago. It left us with the road system we now enjoy, which must, under the pressure of quite recent changes, be modified if our communications are to be saved, or, at any rate, to keep pace with the present conditions of travel. ”

“ The Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and the Turnpike-keeper, unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler. Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window of espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to behold the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhibited for sale little barber’s-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky lantern.
The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed itself. ”

“ I have seen that the resistance to the rolling motion of a carriage on a well-constructed turnpike road may be fairly estimated, cæteris paribus, at about twelve times the resistance on a railroad. It follows, therefore, that whatever be the power of traction used, it will be capable of drawing a load of proportionally less amount on the turnpike road. The surface of a turnpike road is necessarily more uneven than that of a railroad ”

“ TURNPIKE, a pike or pointed bar or stake which turns or revolves, hence the name given to a form of barrier consisting of three or more horizontal bars, with one end sharpened, revolving on a pivot. Such barriers were used across roads, and, when tolls were exacted from passengers along highways to raise the money for the upkeep of the roads, the name, though not the form, was given both to the toll-gates set up at different places where the tolls were collected, and to the highways repaired under the system (see Highway) . ”

“ Washington, and the one that stood near the eastern base of Big Savage Mountain. At the last mentioned point, the old iron gate posts are still standing, firmly rooted in their original foundations, and plastered all over with advertisements of Frostburg’s business houses, but the old house and the old gates have gone out of sight forever.
It is curious to note how the word turnpike has been perverted from its literal meaning by popular usage. The common idea is that a turnpike is a road made of stone, and that the use of stone is that alone which makes it a turnpike. ”

“ The inherent defects of the turnpike system must in themselves have been fatal to its permanent continuance, irrespective of the influence of the railways, which did not kill the turnpikes so much as merely give them the coup de grace. ”

“ The Squire has been in his day connected more or less intimately with turnpike enterprise, which the railroads of the day have thrown sadly into the background; and he reflects often in a melancholy way upon the good old times when a man could travel in his own carriage quietly across the country, without being frightened with the clatter of an engine, and when turnpike stock paid wholesome yearly dividends of six per cent. ”

“ I may not be, perhaps, far from the truth in assuming that the average traction of level turnpike roads, in the summer or frosty season, is about twelve times that of railroads; and consequently that the same power acting on a railroad, will always draw or impel twelve times the load which it can transport on a common road. But I am decidedly of opinion that a steam coach or carriage cannot be used on turnpike roads in the winter season, more particularly after a sharp frost, on a new road ”

“ Would that time and space were mine to explain the road, pauper, and school systems of Massachusetts and Connecticut. (They and Rhode Island are the only states of New England which I have visited.) But that would require too much detail. Their felicitous organization may be inferred from their effects.
The common roads are all, or nearly all, ridged up, turnpike fashion, and fully as good as our turnpikes. I do not mean such as a certain one not far from ——, which the traveller knows to be a turnpike only by the tolls and the jolts, but those in the valley, and near Richmond. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Turnpikes are the natural outlets for residences forced away from the business centre and in small towns attract the inhabitants by the human interest and protection of the passing travel. Growth along turnpikes continues to a point where the inconvenience of living so far out of town more than offsets the attractions of the turnpike when back streets are laid out. ”

“ A hungry traveler could obtain a substantial meal at an old wagon stand tavern for a “levy,” and two drinks of whisky for a “fippenny bit.” The morning bill of a wagoner with a six-horse team did not exceed one dollar and seventy-five cents, which included grain and hay for the horses, meals for the driver, and all the drinks he saw proper to take.
The National Road is not in a literal sense a turnpike. A turnpike, in the original meaning of the word, is a road upon which pikes were placed to turn travelers thereon through gates, to prevent them from evading the payment of toll. ”

“ The studies also show, however, that drivers on long trips use the turnpike in greater proportion than those on shorter trips and that the proportion of those using it increases as the frequency of trips decreases. ”

“ I have explained that the effect of incurvations on a road will obstruct the speed, whether it be a railroad or a turnpike road, but that the increased resistance offered by them on turnpike roads, bears a much smaller proportion to the resistance on the level, than is the case in railroads. The increased power, therefore, required by them, is not so great proportionally on turnpike roads as on railways ”

“ Arthur Young did not find the turnpike any better between Bury and Sudbury, in Suffolk: "I was forced to move as slow in it," he says, "as in any unmended lane in Wales. For, ponds of liquid dirt, and a scattering of loose flints just sufficient to lame every horse that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road under the pretence of letting the water off, but without effect, altogether render at least twelve out of these sixteen miles as infamous a turnpike as ever was beheld." ”

“ This road is thus claimed by Norfolk antiquaries as the first turnpike road to be constructed in the kingdom, but that is a slight error, for the Act was passed merely for repair, and was antedated by thirty-three years, in the first of Turnpike Acts, that of 1663, which provided for the repair and turnpiking of the road from London to Stilton—the “Old North” and the “Great North” roads of modern parlance. ”

“ The want of the same evenness on the surface of a turnpike road, the different states of repair in which different parts of it must necessarily be at any given time, but, above all, the fact that the rolling of the carriages themselves is the means by which the road is for the most part formed, consolidated and rendered smooth, make it necessary that any power of traction used upon it shall be susceptible, as occasion may require, of considerably varied energy. ”

“ Above all things the scattered settlements in the upper valley needed communication with each other. The road by which they reached the outer world ran from Wattles’s Ferry to Catskill,—a road much older in its [48] first state than the turnpike and one which the turnpike finally supplanted. The original road had been opened about fifteen years before the turnpike was established. A wheeled vehicle as early as 1787 is known to have made a journey over its entire length. ”

“ It is astonishing that in so fine and so improving a country more attention is not paid to the roads. A turnpike is projected from Pittsburgh to Harrisburgh, which I am clearly of opinion, might be kept in repair by a reasonable toll;—and then wagons with goods may travel between the two places in a third less time than they do now, and without the present great risks of breaking down, and the mails may be delivered at the post-offices one half sooner. ”

“ At the same moment I heard the scream of an engine, and on looking towards the downs I noticed the up-train shooting out of the tunnel, its red signal lamps flashing brightly out of the purple gloom which bathed the roots of the hills.
Seeing that I was late, I whipped the Welsh pony on, and proceeded at a fast trot.
At about a quarter mile from the station there is a turnpike—an odd-looking building tenanted by a strange old man usually dressed in a white smock, over which his long white beard flowed to his breast. ”

“ The only mending it receives is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions but facts, for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable memory."
"To Warrington. Turnpike. This is a paved road, and most infamously bad.... Tolls had better be doubled and even quadrupled than allow such a nuisance to remain."
"From Dunholm to Knotsford. Turnpike. It is impossible to describe these infernal roads in terms adequate to their defects. ”

“ The public vehicle comes in much at the same time as the private vehicle, developed by the new great landlord class for their convenience in their country rounds. As has been the case with the internal combustion engine in our own time, the instrument preceded the change in the road. As wheeled traffic for passengers becomes more common you get increasing complaints on the condition of the roads and increasing motive for improving them, and out of that grows the turnpike system, which, with its later development, has carried us on to the present day. ”

“ Turning first to axial growth, the frame-work of a city is laid down by its water courses, turnpikes and railroads. Of these, the turnpikes in the older cities are of chief importance. Before the days of railroads these controlled so much outside traffic that their city ends became the principal business streets, and many still maintain their supremacy. For example, Broadway in New York was part of the old Albany turnpike which runs on to Montreal; Washington Street in Boston was the turnpike to New York, which in passing through Providence was known as Westminster Street ”

“ The stone roads, which were passable at all seasons, brought a new era in correspondence and business. Lines of stages and wagons, as well known at that time as are the great railways of today, plied the new thoroughfares, provided some of the comforts of travel, and assured the safer and more rapid delivery of goods. This period is sometimes known in American history as "The Era of Good Feeling" and the turnpike contributed in no small degree to make the phrase applicable not 61 only to the domain of politics but to all the relations of social and commercial life. ”

“ But this highly specialised meaning was destroyed when Turnpike Acts and Highway Acts began to be passed. The first Turnpike Act, one relating to the road to the North, referred to the Shoreditch, Stamford Hill, Ware, and Royston route, which joined the Great North Road at Alconbury Hill. It was passed in 1663, and authorised a toll-gate at Stilton, among other places. In the preamble to this Act we find the road spoken of as “the ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York and so into Scotland.” ”

“ Even the humble turnpike men were liable to be informed against for not giving a ticket, for taking too much toll, or for not having their names displayed over their doorways.
There were at one time no fewer than five turnpike-gates between London and St. Albans, a distance of only just over twenty miles. The series originally began with the gate on Islington Green, removed afterwards to the Holloway Road, and was continued by the one at Highgate Archway, and others at Whetstone, and South Mimms; the fifth being at the entrance to St. Albans itself. ”

“ In this respect, the Little River Turnpike was one of the best of Virginia’s rural roads, having been laid out and constructed by professional engineers and maintained by hired labor with even more care and regularity than the public roads. In Beattie’s day, as in Moss’s time, the turnpike was the main road between Alexandria and Fairfax, the county seat, and thence to the Valley. ”

“ The answer is plain. Every turnpike has its local limits and local termini; its points of beginning and of end. No one ever imagined, that the legislature might grant a new turnpike, with exactly the same location and termini. That would be to rescind its first grant. The grant of a turnpike between A. and B., does not preclude the legislature from the grant of a turnpike between A. and C., even though it should incidentally intercept some of the travel; for it is not necessarily a nuisance to the former grant. The termini being different, the grants are or may be substantially different. ”

“ Ann Warder, in her journey from Philadelphia to New York in 1759, notes two overturned and abandoned stage-wagons at Perth Amboy; and many other travellers give similar testimony. In 1796 the trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore took five days.
The growth in stage-coaches and travel came with the turnpike at the beginning of this century. In transportation and travel, improvement of roadways is ever associated with improvement of vehicles. The first extensive turnpike was the one between Philadelphia and Lancaster, built in 1792. ”