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Baltimore County:
Historical Reflections and Favorite Scenes
Transportation
The best way to travel in colonial times was by boat. The roads were notoriously bad-- a quagmire in wet weather and a rutted, dusty series of potholes in dry weather. People traveled no farther than they had to, but farmers needed to haul their produce to market, and the poor quality of the roads was a barrier to development. The establishment of a system of toll roads, called turnpikes because of the movable barriers at the tollgates, was a step toward the extraordinary degree of mobility that we enjoy today. York Road, Falls Road, Frederick Road, Liberty Road, Reisterstown Road, Harford Road, Belair Road, and Philadelphia Road all used to be turnpikes.
In 1787, the Maryland legislature authorized Baltimore County to lay out three turnpikes, running from Baltimore City toward Frederick, Reisterstown, and York respectively. The names of the commissioners charged with the task are a cross-section of prominent families-- Ellicott, Lyon, Howard, Owings, Cromwell, Griffith, Merryman, Gist. The effort was financed by a tax on all real estate in the county. The law specified the order in which the different roads were to be built, the amounts of tolls, and the penalties for driving around the tollgates to avoid the tolls. Citizens were to be fined 20 shillings for toll avoidance. Servants or slaves were to receive 20 lashes, and their masters were to pay 10 shillings. Vehicles with wider wheels received a discount; they were easier on the road. A 1788 law authorized the county to use convict labor. Subsequent laws changed the fines, eliminated whippings, and took the management of the turnpikes away from the commissioners and gave it to the Levy Court. Apparently the whole enterprise was not going well under county management, and in 1805 the legislature created three private turnpike companies. The new companies had to reimburse the county for the costs of construction. Their charters provided that the tolls should be high enough to allow the companies a profit of not more than ten percent per annum, and the system of charges was complex.
The same toll applied to horses and mules, but two oxen counted as one horse. For the use of ten miles of road, the charges were as follows: "for every score of sheep, one eighth of a dollar; for every score of hogs, one eighth of a dollar; for every score of cattle, one fourth of a dollar; for every horse and his rider, or led horse, one sixteenth of a dollar; for every chair or chaise with one horse and two wheels, one eighth of a dollar;" and on and on through the various types of conveyances and widths of wheels and number of draught animals.
The turnpikes, laid out as straight as possible and paved with crushed stone, were the fastest roads in the county. Even so, travel was painfully slow. Robert W. Heacock, who lived north of Loch Raven, had to leave home at 11 p.m. to arrive at Hollins Market in Baltimore City at 5 a.m. to sell his eggs and dairy goods, a 6-hour commute of 14 or 15 miles. Riders on horseback made much better time. One Lutheran minister, the Reverend Conrad B. Gohdes, tended three different churches simultaneously. At the tollgates, he would call out, "Preacher!" and jump the gate at a gallop, coattails streaming behind him (clergymen were not required to pay tolls). He became known as the flying Dutchman. Some other travelers were exempt from tolls. Pedestrians walked the road gratis. The Marquis de Lafayette and his attendants got free passage when the beloved Frenchman returned in 1824. Funeral processions were exempted by an 1888 law, but this law was found unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals in 1900 with respect to the Frederick Turnpike because the company's charter was a contract that predated the law. Bicyclists initially paid nothing when the cycling fad began in the 1890's. In 1895, the York Turnpike and Charles Street Avenue began charging cyclists a five-cent toll, the same as for single horses. Bicycling organizations retaliated by advising their members to refuse to pay the toll and leave their names and addresses with the gatekeeper. Then the company would have to prosecute them and risk a public discussion of the condition of the roads. This was a discussion the turnpike companies wished to avoid. The simple fact was that the tolls, as onerous as everyone seems to have found them, were insufficient to keep the roads in good repair and utterly inadequate to improve them to the standard required for those dratted motorcars, which paid a ten-cent toll and then tore up the road. Most of the time, the companies did not turn much profit. 1863 was an exception, at least for the Frederick Turnpike, because of its heavy use by the Union army. The U.S. government paid only half what the company claimed it was owed, but $19,271.58 was a good sum in those days. A good sum, but not enough to offset the $100,000 in damages by floods in 1866 and additional losses to floods in 1868. It was not until the county and the state bought out the turnpikes (1910-1917) that the high cost of good roads could be rolled into the state and county budgets.
Since the beginning of the interstate highway system in 1956, Federal money has also helped to support the ever-growing volume of traffic. The Baltimore Beltway, completed in 1962, speeds travelers around Baltimore City and has substantially contributed to the decline of the city's central business district. People fleeing to the suburbs from an increasingly crime-ridden city have been able to move about much more easily because of this high-speed road. Although the Jones Falls Expressway, begun in the early 1950's, created a spur running from the beltway to downtown, various plans for a convenient, high-speed road through the inner city have run up against a wall of opposition.
Though the age of the toll roads has passed, the roads themselves still follow the same courses as in the 19th century...