A perfect epidemic of bridge-building broke out all over the states. In our pride we wished to exhibit our superiority over the English everywhere. Throughout Maryland, Pennsylvania, and upper Virginia, fine wooden and stone bridges were built. On all the turnpikes the bridges equalled the roads. Many of those bridges still are in use. The oldest suspension bridge in America, the “chain-bridge” at Newburyport, Massachusetts, is still standing. A picture of it here is shown. It is a graceful bridge, and its lovely surroundings add to its charm.
The traveller Melish noted specially, in 1812, the fine Trenton Bridge, “very elegant, nine hundred and seventy feet long, with two carriage ways”; the West Boston Bridge “three thousand feet long, with a causeway three thousand more”; the Schuylkill Bridge, which cost over two hundred thousand dollars.
So bad was the state of English roads at the end of the eighteenth century that it took two days’ and three nights’ incessant travel to get from Manchester to Glasgow. The crossroads were worse. In many cases when mail-coaches had been granted, the roads were too poor to receive them. The ruts, or rather trenches, were up to the axletrees. When a mail-coach was put on the Holyhead Road in 1808, twenty-two townships were indicted for having their roads in a dangerous condition. This road had vast sums spent upon it; in the six years succeeding 1825 it had £83,700 for “improvements,” and repairs were paid by the tolls. Its condition now is very mean, grass-grown in places, and in ill-repair.
Old Chain bridge, Newburyport, Massachusetts.
The system of road-making known as macadamizing received its name from Mr. Loudon McAdam, who came to England from America in 1783 at a time when many new roads were being made in Scotland. These roads he studied and in 1816 became road surveyor in Bristol, where he was able to carry his principles into practice. The leading feature of his system was setting a limit in size and weight to the stones to be used on the roads, the weight limit being six ounces; also to prohibit any mixture of clay, earth, or chalk with the stone. Similar roads had been made in Pennsylvania long before they were laid in England, and had been tested; and without doubt McAdam simply followed methods he had seen successfully used in America. Among others the Salem and Boston Turnpike, the Essex Turnpike (between Salem and Andover), and the Newburyport Turnpike, all macadamized roads, were in successful operation before Telford and McAdam had perfected their systems.
McAdam’s son, Sir James McAdam, was General Superintendent of Metropolitan Roads in England when, as he expressed it, “the calamity of railways fell upon us.” This “calamity” brought these results: coaches ran less frequently, and all horse-carriage decreased, toll receipts diminished, many turnpike roads became bankrupt and passed into possession of towns and parishes, and are kept in scarcely passable repair. Many English macadamized roads are only kept in order in half, while the other part of the road bears weeds and grass.
The first American turnpike was not in Pennsylvania, as is usually stated, but in Virginia. It connected Alexandria (then supposed to be the rising metropolis) with “Sniggers and Vesta’s Gaps”—that is, the lower Shenandoah. This turnpike was started in 1785-86, and Thomas Jefferson pronounced it a success. In 1787 the Grand Jury of Baltimore reported the state of the country roads as a public grievance, and the Frederick, Reisterstown, and York roads were laid out anew by the county as turnpikes with toll-gates. In 1804 these roads were granted to corporate companies. Others soon followed, till all the main roads through Maryland were turnpikes.
The most important early turnpike was the one known as the National Road because it was made by the national government. It extended at first from Cumberland to Wheeling, and was afterward carried farther. When first opened it was a hundred and thirty miles long, and cost one and three-quarters millions of dollars. Proposed in Congress in 1797, an act providing for its construction was passed nine years later, and the first mail-coach carrying the United States mail travelled over it in August, 1818. It was a splendid road, sixty feet wide, of stone broken to pass through a three-inch ring, then covered with gravel and rolled down with an iron roller. One who saw the constructive work on it wrote:—
“That great contractor, Mordecai Cochran, with his immortal Irish brigade—a thousand strong, with their carts, wheelbarrows, picks, shovels, and blasting-tools, graded the commons and climbed the mountain side, leaving behind them a roadway good enough for an emperor.”