The Albany (New York) Institute of History and Art spotlighted an artifact of the US “Turnpike Era” in a social media post. It contains the image of a sign in the institute’s collection that displays the toll rates charged around 1840 for travel across a five-mile-long turnpike “that ran south from the Albany city line on the road that would be named South Pearl Street.” The facility was built in 1805, and judging by its variety of rate classes for wagons, carts and animal herds, its purpose was to facilitate commerce as much as personal transportation.
The era when toll roads accommodated traffic other than motor vehicles is long over, of course. However, this relic of Albany’s past demonstrates that turnpikes have been crucial arteries for the movement of goods as well as people since their earliest days.