Boydton and Petersburg Plank Road
A “Timbered Turnpike”
The Boydton and Petersburg Plank Road, built between 1851 and 1853, was the first all-weather route connecting Southside Virginia’s tobacco and wheat farms with the market. Pine and oak planks, 8 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 3-4 inches thick were laid across paralleled beams slanting toward a ditch. The road boosted crop revenues 30 to 100 percent. Along the approximately 73 miles, there were 7 toll houses and keepers. Stagecoaches drove the 73 miles Monday through Saturday, stopping every 11 miles for food and fresh teams. Condemned by 1860, the victim of heat, rainfall, humidity, and clay, it nonetheless provided an important route for troop movements during the Civil War. Another continuous hard-surface link would not exist until the 1930s. Parts of some highways, including U.S. 1, follow the old roadbed, and Petersburg still has a thoroughfare called Boydton Plank Road. A ten mile extension to the Roanoke River at Clarksville was completed in 1856.
Marker is at the intersection of Hull Street (Virginia Route T-1204) and Cemetery Street, on the left when traveling east on Hull Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
