The "The Building Of Our Nation's 1st Highway" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about the birth of America's first highway known as the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike and later renamed the Lincoln Highway.  

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shares in the highway.

Ground was first broken in 1792 for a roadway that was touted as the first "engineered" road in the nation.  Engineered meant that it was surveyed, graded and paved with packed gravel stones for its entire length which was from the town of Columbia, Pennsylvania, which is located at the western most terminus, to Girard Avenue in the Parkside neighborhood of Philadelphia.  Its total length was 73.33 miles, but was 62 miles from Lancaster to Philadelphia.  The new road was too expensive for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to build so it was built by a private company known as The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road Company.  The cost was $465,000 or about $9.5 million today.  Shares of the "Company of the Lancaster and Turnpike Road" were first issued on March 16, 1795.

A toll stop leading to the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike.

 I found a listing for shares in the Phila- delphia & Lancaster Turnpike Company dated May 24th, 1796 that were listed for $100 and could be paid in three monthly installments.  The new turnpike had "Toll Gates" that were placed approximately every 10 miles, but many driving on the road took side roads to circumvent the gates.  People who did so were at the time known as "shunpikes."  

This photograph shows the highway looking west in 1929.

There were those that were exempt from paying tolls such as anyone who live along the turnpike, anyone passing from one part of a farm to another, anyone on their way to a funeral, anyone on their way to church, anyone engaged in military service or on their way to vote in an election.  Eventually the turnpike was absorbed into the transcontinental route known as the Lincoln Highway or in Lancaster County as Route 30.  

The tourist attraction known as the Amish Farm and House.

The highway was formal- ly dedi- cated to President Abraham Lincoln with several statues of Lincoln placed along its eventual total 3,389 mile length.  Along the highway in Lancaster County sat the SkyVue Drive-in Theater which opened on Tuesday, May 23, 1950.  It was one of my favorite places to allegedly watch an outdoor movie.  It eventually was torn down to make room for  Lancaster's first Outlet Mall in 1985.  

The Highway today.

The mall became competition for the tourist dollars with the Amish Farm & House along what by this time was known as Route 30 instead of the Lancaster to Philadelphia Highway.  Today Tanger Outlet Center sits in the spot once occupied by the Outlet Mall.  If you have ever driven the once gravel stone turnpike, now paved Lincoln Highway, or Route 30, you probably have no idea what it must have looked like when it first traversed Lancaster County.  Hard to think it was the very first turnpike or highway in our nation.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.