Thursday 16 February 2012

National Road - USA

The National Road was the first federally built road in the USA, it is now mostly known as route 40. Wikipedia has a nice page on the road here. From reading that page it seems that three tollhouses remain on the road, one in Maryland and two in Pennsylvania. I have pictures of two of them.

Maryland tollhouse, Lavale



I visited this one February on week-long drive I took from Boston to Washington via Niagara and Pittsburgh. I have added it to the rest-of-world map page and you can also find it on the map below


If you zoom the map out you will see that this one is well placed in a gap in the hilly ridge, making it one of the few routes to drive livestock or carriages from one side to the other.

Pennsylvania "Searight's Tollhouse"

I didn't actually take these pictures myself, my parents spotted the tollhouse and took them for me.

They clearly went there on a much warmer day!




I like the "...whatever name it be called..." bit to ensure no one can sneak a vehicle past by claiming it doesn't appear on the list.


Both of these tollhouses seem to be constructed to the same plan, but the Maryland one is rendered whereas the Pennsylvania one is left at the natural brick finish. The third remaining tollhouse is the Petersburgh tollhouse in Pennsylvania. I don't have my own photos of that one but if you look at streetview on google maps other people have.


If you look at the photos you will see that again the plan is the same, but this time the building is of stone construction and is not rendered.

No comments:

Post a Comment