Happily tossing three coins in a Roman fountain may be romantic and putting another nickel in the nickelodeon, as the old song says, may bring love and “music, music, music,” but grudgingly travelers ante up for the daily privilege of driving many of the roadways across the good ol’ U. S. of A. Yes, toll roads are considered the bane of the motoring public, and whenever the thought is broached of building another one or worse yet converting a “freeway” into a toll road there is much grumbling and gnashing of teeth.
During the pioneer era, settlement in Indiana was facilitated by two roads crisscrossing the state — the east-west National Road and the north-south Michigan Road. Constructed as part of the national and state internal improvement programs, these “thoroughfares” were initially little more than stump strewn pathways cut through the wilderness with “their mud and chuckholes and ruts.” Travel was often impeded above and alongside the road with overhanging branches and encroaching vegetation.
Responsibility for the upkeep of the roads was passed on to the counties through which the road passed in the 1840s, and at the beginning of the following decade improving the surface of a road by laying wooden planks across the dirt roadbed became popular. Private plank-road companies sought charters from the state legislature and soon portions of the National Road and the Michigan Road were planked. Toll booths were erected at various points along the roads so that the companies could recoup their expenses and provide a dividend for the stockholders. A National Road adventurer traversing the section maintained by the Central Plank Road Company noted that it was “very pleasant …to travel upon” – no dust swirling about from dirt or gravel – “the sawn boards or planks…rose and sank under us with the elasticity of the floor of a ball room.” Unfortunately, the life of a plank road was short; poor drainage caused the wood to rot and the sun warped the boards.
By the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, companies had been organized to macadamize (compacted stone pieces) or gravel the road surfaces. The Indianapolis & Cumberland Gravel Road Company was organized in July 1864 and received a franchise from the Marion County commissioners for the section of the National Road eastward from the Indianapolis city limits to the Hancock County line. The tolls were straightforward: Vehicles drawn by a horse or oxen, 2 cents (2017: 33ȼ) per mile and ¾ of a cent for every additional animal per mile; a horse and rider, 1½ cents (2017: 24ȼ) per mile; a score of sheep or swine, 5 cents (2017: 81ȼ) per mile; and a score of cattle, mules, or asses, 10 cents (2017: $1.63) per mile. Those going to a funeral could pass free. In its first full year of operation, the company had receipts of $7,668.83 (2017: $130,386). The Indianapolis & Cumberland Gravel Road Company adopted rules governing the road: “No person shall either ride or drive over any bridge faster than a walk; No person shall horse race on said road, nor shoot across or alongside said road or any bridge thereof; The driver of any vehicle on said road, when met or overtaken by another vehicle, shall keep to the right so as to allow such other vehicle, meeting or overtaking aforesaid, to pass freely, and without obstruction or hinderance.”
There were three toll-gates with a house for the gate-keeper along the road. Gate No. 1 was west of what is now Sherman Drive and was located at the southwest corner of today’s E. Washington and Ewing Streets. At that time, Brookville Road intersected the National Road here, so the toll-gate was strategically situated. There are stories of Butler University students riding to the Irvington campus from the city and having “merry times skipping the gates” only to be pursued by the president of the toll road “on a fleet horse” who warned the boys “that they would be prosecuted in they did not pay.”
The Augusta Gravel Road Company received a franchise in 1866 for the portion of the Michigan Road in northwest Marion County. The gate-keeper at a toll house, which today stands at 4702 N. Michigan Rd, collected 3ȼ (2017: 51ȼ) for a horse and buggy.
For decades the long pole of toll gates, standing like sentinels, guarded every highway leading into Indianapolis. While the tolls collected by the private companies holding the road franchises were used to maintain the roads, many considered this practice to be barriers to trade. By the early 1880s, farmers and businessmen began calling for the construction of free gravel roads supported by taxation. With construction of alternate “free gravel roads” like Clifford Avenue (10th Street) and English Avenue paralleling the toll roads, the owners of the toll roads soon found their earnings decreasing, and they became willing to have the Marion County commissioners “take the roads off their hands.” State legislation made it easier for the counties to purchase the toll roads and convert them to free thoroughfares.
In the fall of 1889, the Indianapolis & Cumberland Gavel Road Company relinquished its franchise of the National Road from the Indianapolis city limits through Irvington to the Marion County commissioners in exchange for the granting of a franchise to operate the Citizens Street Railway over the road. At this time, Marion County had two hundred and fifteen miles of gravel roads and over fifty miles of toll roads — Zionsville & Pike Township Road, Shelbyville Road, Mud Creek & Fall Creek Road, Buck Creek Road, Valley Mills Road, Rockville Pike, and the National Road — had become “free gravel roads.” Seventy miles of toll roads remained in the county until August 1896 when four miles of the Pleasant Run toll road was purchased by the county commissioners.
Soon the bicyclists and the motoring public began to demand paved road surfaces, and the solution for paying for road improvements was a user fee — the gasoline tax. However, fuel efficient vehicles and alternatives to fossil fuels will lead to more creative ways to continue to pay for road maintenance as motorists ante up.
