Monday, October 31, 2011

Nothing Free - Even in Turnpike Days


Toll houses such as this one preserved at Genesee Country Village at Mumford, N.Y.  were located at the entrances and spaced every 10 miles along turnpikes and later plank roads. Tolls collected not only gave people a livelihood but provided funds for road maintenance and, once in awhile, a dividend to the stockholders. Usually the toll keeper and his family lived in these small structures. This one is from the Rochester & Hemlock Lake Plank Road, dating to the late 1840s or early 1850s.

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