The "Toll Gates and Turnpikes" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Checking a photo in the book "From the Beginning - A History of Manheim Township" which was written by C. Nat Netscher and designed and laid out by yours truly.  264 pages of copy, photos and drawings dealing with the township in which I was born and still live in Lancaster County, PA.  Pretty neat and I have written about it before, but today I have something different to share with you.  Has to do with the turnpike.  My friend Jerry and I were talking about the word turnpike and he was telling me that the word really referred to the long stick or pole that blocked the passage of cars or whatever until the toll was paid.  Wow, learn something new everyday.  I guess I should have known that since I did a chapter titled Transportation in the book that I laid out for Nat.  So, while Jerry and I were seated in my office, I dug out the book and showed him one of the photos that showed travelers on the New Holland Pike paying their toll at the gate.  This pike later became free for travel after the government took over the maintenance of it.  This same area, long before there were any roads, used the local waterways as a means of transportation.  Originally the Indians and then later the colonists trampled down pathways which eventually became roadways.  In the later part of the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth century turnpikes where everywhere.  Most were to carry travelers to local destinations.  Then the first major toll road in the United States was completed.  The turnpike ran from Philadelphia to Lancaster and bore that name.  It was built in the 1790s.  Soon other larger turnpikes were constructed along the east coast.  In the mid to late nineteenth century private toll road building was particularly active in the West where stage companies, ranchers and mining companies laid out turnpikes to attract business for their investments.  By the end of 1930 Manheim Township's six toll roads had been made free for travelers.  At most toll gates or pikes was a toll house where the gatekeeper lived that collected the tolls for traveling on the road.  I found a couple of interesting photos that show two of the local toll gates with their toll-houses next to them.  

The toll gate and toll house where Forest Hill Road meets
the New Holland Pike in Upper Leacock Township.

One toll gate is located where Forest Hill Road meets the New Holland Pike in Upper Leacock Township while the other photo show travelers on the New Holland Pike just east of Pleasure Road in Manheim Township.  Both of these gates were taken down by 1930.  Many travelers bought tokens to be used at the toll gates while others paid in cash.  A Mrs. Waters, who collected tolls at the Pleasure Road gate said she learned that earmuffs came in handy to prevent her from hearing the swearing that took place by impolite customers.  

Travelers on the New Holland Pike are paying a toll at this
gate just east of Pleasure Road.  

She reported that the larger the car, the more likely the driver was going to give her a harder time.  Many tourists to the area in the early 1900s couldn't believe that such a thing as a toll road existed.  She told the local Lancaster newspaper, during an interview, that one of her jobs was to take down the license plate number of cars that refused to pay and she would phone the general manager of the turnpike company to be on the lookout for the cars.  She also remembered one driver who had tried too hard to avoid paying the toll whose car sideswiped a utility pole, turned over several times and killed him.  All so he didn't have to pay a fee for using a road that had been built by someone who wanted to get their money back for building the road.  So, today when you use a turnpike near you it probably was at one time a toll-road where a gatekeeper collected the fee by moving the wooden gate, stick or pole away from the road so you could pass through.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.