Turnpike

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Kelsey and I live in Juneau, Alaska.

And my question is, what is the origin of the term turnpike and where in the country is it most commonly used?

Well, what got you to thinking about turnpike there in Juneau?

Do they have them in Juneau?

They do not.

And I was actually discussing it with a friend of mine about, because I actually was born and raised in Alaska and there’s very little roads here.

And I actually don’t even really know what a turnpike is, or basically I don’t know what the difference between a turnpike and a highway is.

Because here, it’s all, you know, all of our highways are either named or in Juneau specifically, we only have 40 miles of road.

Okay.

Yeah.

We can help with this, Kelsey.

Let’s go back to about the 1700s when the United States was expanding at a rapid pace.

Lots of people were pushing westward and roads were being built.

In the beginning, most of those roads were privately funded.

It wasn’t like today where most roads are public roads.

And so these companies would form and they’d build these roads to connect important commercial centers.

And in order to make the roads attractive, they would make them less bumpy.

They would put down wood planks perhaps or do something to remediate the mud because that was a problem with roads prior to putting down macadam or asphalt as we would today.

They tended to be a mess most points during the year.

But in order to fund these roads, they had to raise money and they would charge tolls.

Now, to charge the tolls, they had to have some way to regulate who came on and off of these roads, right?

And so imagine the turnstiles, kind of like you would see at an amusement park, or even better, the vertical ones that you would see in the subway in New York City.

Maybe that’s not going to mean enough to everybody.

But it’s a central pole standing upright, and on the pole are arms kind of left and right.

And so to get that turnpike to turn, you’ve got to pay a toll.

Those arms that stick out, they look exactly like the pikes that soldiers would use.

They’re basically kind of like a spear.

They have a sharp end and you poke things with them.

A pike is a long pole with a sharp end that you can stab somebody or something or an animal with it.

And so the pikes literally turn.

They literally turn to give you access to this road.

For the most part, you’ll find turnpikes only in the eastern part of the United States, particularly in the northeast.

Because it wasn’t one of those things that was particularly common elsewhere once other means of making roads became available.

Basically, a lot of these companies went bust because it actually was really hard to keep people off the roads, and a lot of people just preferred to take the old, muddy, bumpy road that they didn’t have to pay for, which, by the way, came to be called freeways because they were literally free.

You were free to access them, and they didn’t cost you anything.

That is cool.

So turnpikes, you don’t really see that anywhere else but like the northeast?

It’s almost always in the northeast, yeah.

As a matter of fact, I don’t know if there are any places west of the Rockies and maybe west of the Mississippi where there’s a turnpike.

I could be wrong.

We’ll find out if that’s the case, believe me.

The email will come pouring in within seconds.

One, three, two, one.

There we go.

Hey, Kelsey, thanks for calling.

Oh, thank you.

Thanks for talking to me.

Thanks, Kelsey.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Have a good one.

Bye-bye.

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