The history behind Parkersburg Turnpike

Have you ever thought about the names of roads?

For instance if you leave Staunton on West Beverley Street then the road (Va. 254) becomes Parkersburg Turnpike and if you travel further west past Buffalo Gap High School you can drive through the national forest on Old Parkersburg Turnpike. Did you ever wonder why a road in Staunton is named for a West Virginia city on the banks of the Ohio River?

Recently I had the opportunity to travel the 4½ hours to Parkersburg, West Virginia, for an anniversary and birthday celebration of friends. Guess what? They have a Staunton Street! That’s not just a coincidence — the two cities were once intimately connected by the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, the superhighway of antebellum Virginia. I know that if you drive along the Old Parkersburg Turnpike near Buffalo Gap you will scoff at the notion that this rough gravel road was a superhighway, but look closely at the road. Notice how nicely graded it is and note the fine stonework that you will occasionally see along the route.

So let’s go back in time to the 1820s when Virginia included all of what is now West Virginia and the state’s western citizens felt frustrated at being so far away from the state government in Richmond. Further, America was a nation in motion by this time with people moving west and finding easier access and having better communication to the great Ohio River and western lands was very desirable.

In 1826, the Virginia Assembly finally listened to the agitated citizens in the western part of the state and authorized the construction of a turnpike connecting Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley to Parkersburg. The road was to be laid out by Virginia’s state engineer Claudius Crozet, a French immigrant who had been trained as an engineer in Napoleon’s army. Crozet would later gain fame as the brains behind the railroad tunnel through Afton Mountain that is now being restored as a greenway connecting Nelson and Augusta Counties.

But back to the 1820s and the planning for the turnpike. A turnpike, by the way, is a toll road designed to collect money to fund the maintenance of the road. At intervals along the road, a toll house was constructed and a long pole, like the arm that comes down at a railroad crossing, was stretched across the road. The pole was called a pike and was designed to stop travelers until they had paid their toll at which time the pike was lifted or turned to allow the travelers to continue on their journey. Thus the word turnpike was coined.

Crozet’s task was not an easy one as he was charged with designing a road across steep mountains. The road was supposed to have a grade of no more than 4 percent, meaning that the road rose no more than four feet in height for every 100 feet in length. He did not fully succeed in the goal of 4 percent, but he built a fine road in the process. He did not have to start from scratch, for a lot of the route used old Indian trails that had turned into horse paths, all of which followed the contours of the land and crossed streams at known fords.

Although the surveys began in the 1830s, actual construction did not begin until 1838. The road was built by local workers with each team, overseen by a local contractor, taking a 20-mile segment. The work started simultaneously in Parkersburg and Staunton with the last section being completed between Buckhannon and Weston in 1845. Bridges were built under separate contracts and the last of those was completed in 1849.

Once the road was open, travelers entered a whole new era of modern travel. Imagine that a stagecoach could leave Staunton and be on the Ohio River in just 3 ½ days for the sum of $13! The stage left Staunton at 1 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It also left Parkersburg on those same days at 4 a.m. It crossed through the counties of Augusta, Highland, Pocahontas, Randolph, Barbour, Lewis, Gilmer, Ritchie, and Wood.

An 1848 flier touted the advantages of taking the new stage line on the new road: “This line offers inducements to the traveling public, as the cheapest and most expeditious, being one day in advance of any other line to the Ohio, and over the finest graded road in Virginia.”

Stagecoaches were just one of the means of transportation seen along the road. There were also wagons, carts, carriages, horseback riders, walkers, and droves of livestock. Each type of transportation and the different animals all had different tolls. Although the tolls varied over the years, they generally ranged as follows: a wagon, team, and driver was 25 to 55 cents, a four-wheeled carriage 20 to 45 cents, a cart or two-wheeled vehicle was 12.5 to 20 cents, a man on horseback was 6 ¼ cents, cattle were a quarter of a cent each, and sheep or hogs were 3 to 5 cents per 20 animals.

As soon as the road was open, travel started to flow, although during the first year the road was not exactly clogged with new traffic. The 1848 records of W.L. Trimble, a tollgate keeper in Highland County near Monterey, have preserved the totals for January of that initial year: 51 travelers on horseback, seven horses that were led or driven, five buggies, 11 loaded wagons, 47 animal drawn wagons or carts, and 17 hogs. The total amount of tolls collected was $8.63 ½.

Of course, now that you know about this superhighway stretching to Parkersburg, you can understand why Civil War battles fought in what now seems like the middle of nowhere like Rich Mountain, West Virginia, or McDowell in Highland, were so strategically important. They were fought over control of the road to the west.

Although roads and transportation have certainly changed a lot since the 1840s, one can still drive much of the old turnpike today. In Highland and several West Virginia counties it pretty much follows U.S. 250. For our recent journey to Parkersburg, we chose to take the interstate. Either way, a trip to the banks of the Ohio is worth your time. The city, just a little bit bigger than Staunton, boomed after the Civil War because of the oil and gas industry. There are several museums, a state park, and a lovely historic district for which free walking tour guides are available.

A visit to Parkersburg should include a trip on an Ohio River sternwheeler to Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park (for hours and more information visit www.blennerhassettislandstatepark.com). There you can tour the reconstructed mansion built by Irish aristocrat and scoundrel Harman Blennerhassett and you can also take the nearly two-mile wagon ride around the island. A trip to Parkersburg requires at least one night’s stay, so plan on settling in at the historic Blennerhassett Hotel which is within walking distance of the historic district, the museums and the Ohio River. One of the things that will strike you about Parkersburg is the number of bridges. In addition to the Ohio, a second river, the Little Kanawha, wends through the city. If you cross the Ohio on one of the bridges you will soon find yourself in the town of Marietta, Ohio, a historic town in its own right and worth several hours of your sightseeing time.

So, now you know the story behind the Parkersburg Turnpike or the Staunton Turnpike as they say at the other end. If you have a long weekend go visit the other end of Virginia’s superhighway and learn the rest of the story.