The Baltimore & Frederick-Town Turnpike
A Transportation Revolution started here
Maryland toll roads helped revolutionize American travel. The Baltimore and Frederick-Town Turnpike began with a tollgate, placed near this corner in 1807. For
a few cents, you could head west on a “smooth” road that was the ancestor of today’s turnpikes. Private investors spent ten thousand dollars a mile to build crushed stone all-weather thoroughfares all the way
to Cumberland. This road system became Baltimore’s link to the federal National Road and the American interior.
Early American roads were often described as “savage desolation.” They were old Indian paths filled with mud, tree stumps and bone-jarring gullies. It could take five days to travel a hundred miles. Four-horse teams, pulling heavy stagecoaches called “shakeguts” and “turtlebacks,” had to rest every few miles. The Baltimore and Frederick -Town Turnpike connected Baltimore’s deep-water port to the farm lands of the Ohio Valley, a combination that made Baltimore in 1830 the second largest city in America.
Marker is on West Baltimore Street, on the left when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
