#turnpikes

Escape the cities!

Before 1911, if you needed to travel any distance outside Cincinnati, you paid a toll. Most of our major thoroughfares started life as toll roads or turnpikes. Some of these old toll roads have retained a hint of their original status in nicknames like Clough Pike, Delhi Pike, Harrison Pike and Springfield Pike.

Originally, turnpikes seemed like a pretty good idea. In the pioneer days, if you needed a road, you had to build it and maintain it yourself. Every able-bodied man was drafted a couple of days each month to maintain nearby roads. Under the turnpike system, the State of Ohio partnered with private investors to raise the capital to pave and maintain roads between major population centers. Tolls levied on travelers, vehicles and animals paid back the investors.

For many years, the system worked well enough and Hamilton County was crisscrossed by effective roads paved with crushed gravel. After 1900, however, local turnpikes deteriorated significantly. To ensure higher return for investors, turnpike companies skimped on repairs. Unhappy with paying tolls to bounce along rutted and muddy routes, travelers sometimes chipped in and bought land to cut their own free pathways to bypass the toll gates.

The first effort to take over the private turnpike companies didn’t go well. In fact, it was a major scandal. We remember George Barnsdale Cox as Boss of Cincinnati, but Boss Cox was actually head of the Hamilton County Republican Party, with his tentacles reaching far outside the city limits. In 1906, Cox and his cronies purchased all or part of six turnpikes: Cincinnati & Harrison (now Harrison Avenue) Warsaw & Cleves (now Cleves-Warsaw Road), Cincinnati & Montgomery (now Montgomery Road), Cincinnati & Hamilton (now Hamilton Avenue), Guerley, and Muddy Creek. According to the Cincinnati Post [1 November 1906]:

“Six turnpikes were purchased by the County Commissioners for $95,287 of the money of the taxpayers. Of this sum the owners of the pikes received $53,996.”

The additional $40,000 went to legal and administrative fees charged by the Cox machine. In other words, graft. Having purchased these roads, the Cox machine spent zero dollars on improvements and they fell into scandalous disrepair with many potholes reported deeper than two feet and many horses seriously injured.

But wait! There’s more! To finance these purchases, Hamilton County issued bonds that accrued $40,000 interest for the bondholders – mostly friends of Boss Cox – for a total of more than $80,000 in graft. The Ohio Senate smelled a very large rat and dispatched a committee to hold hearings. The so-called Drake Committee (named after its chair, Democratic Senator John C. Drake of Erie County) found loads of corruption, but was shut down by the courts before it could convey any incriminating findings to criminal prosecutors.

Enter Fred Bader, among the forgotten heroes of Cincinnati history. Over a long career he held offices including county auditor, city councilman, county commissioner, state representative and county recorder. In 1910, Bader, serving as Ohio Senator from Hamilton County, introduced legislation to allow Ohio counties to take control of turnpikes by a process we now call eminent domain.

Bader was all about improved transportation. It was he who introduced legislation allowing Cincinnati to take over the old, unused and unsanitary canal to create a never-completed subway and Central Parkway. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [3 November 1912]:

“For a long time the abolition of toll gates in Ohio was attempted, but always failed. Senator Bader perfected what is known as the Bader Turnpike Law and under it every toll gate in Ohio is now abolished, and this was done without the least friction.”

Well, not exactly. The turnpike companies almost immediately doubled their tolls to make their properties appear more valuable than they were. The Harrison turnpike proved particularly intransigent. The route between Miamitown and Cheviot remained in private hands while negotiations ran into 1911. The county finally agreed to pay around $31,000 for the seven-mile section, a little over $4,000 per mile. The county was supposed to take ownership on July 13, 1911 and sent surveyor Clinton Cowen out to Miamitown to dismantle the venerable toll gate. According to the Enquirer [14 July 1911]:

“About noon County Surveyor Cowen set out for the tollgate to see that toll collection was stopped. He started to drive through the tollgate, but was halted by the keeper, who demanded toll. Cowen refused to pay and started to tear down the tollgate. The tollgate keeper immediately telephoned Attorney [Joel C.] Clore, who warned the Surveyor he would hold him legally responsible for any damage he did the tollgate. Mr. Cowen and Attorney Clore had a most vigorous conversation over the phone.”

Eventually calmer heads prevailed, substantial checks exchanged hands, and the tollgate was demolished at midnight that very day.

Curiously, Delhi claims that its tollgates – at the upper and lower ends of Anderson Ferry Road – were the last tollgates to be removed, but they were demolished in August 1910, almost a year prior to the kerfuffle at Miamitown.

Most of the longest-lasting tollgates were located in Hamilton County outside Cincinnati. As the city annexed nearby villages, it eventually transformed any affected toll roads into city highways. One example is Linwood. Annexed by Cincinnati in 1894, Linwood still had a toll road, complete with a tollgate, operated by one Sam Ferris at the corner of Linwood Avenue and Observatory Avenue as late as 1898.

These “tollgates” usually included a house for the gate keeper, and some still exist. One toll house (doing double duty as a post office) that stood at Blue Rock and Banning Roads since 1829 is now restored and preserved by the Coleraine Historical Society at their museum on Springdale Road. Mount Healthy has relocated and preserved a tollhouse, originally constructed on Hamilton Avenue in 1859. It is now located at the Mt. Healthy Historical Society museum on McMakin Avenue.

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