Turnpike Construction in Antebellum Virginia

Abstract

given their attention almost exclusively to railroads and canals and have neglected turnpikes.' It is true that turnpikes were relatively unimportant as main lines of transport, yet most American farmers, and many townsmen, were not fortunate enough to live on a waterway or a railroad line. To these people, the quality and cost of common road transportation was a matter of everyday concern. In the nineteenth century, as in the twentieth, the turnpike was essentially an expedient method of highway financing-and an even less satisfactory method then than now because of the relative ease with which users could avoid paying tolls. Yet it did succeed in improving roads in many states and lowering the cost of road transportation from between $0.20 and $0.25 per ton-mile on common roads to about $0.15 per ton-mile on the best macadamized turnpikes. Some of the best ones, such as the Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania and the Valley Turnpike in Virginia, achieved renown for their high quality. The construction of roads lost its historical status as a highly developed craft during the first half of the nineteenth century and was advanced to the fast-growing list of exact sciences, for the best engineering standards in road construction, developed first in France and England, were exacting enough to demand considerable training. Although the United States could claim the first professional school of civil engineering in the English-speaking world (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, established in 1823), and many other American universities entered the field early, Virginia turnpikes were not built often by trained engineers. Most of them were built by amateurs who applied their own notions to the actual work.