North Carolina experienced “plank road fever” from 1849-61. Reflecting on that brief period and its impact on transportation infrastructure, one contemporary journalist commented:
“The promise of smooth
wooden roads that would replace the rutted paths that plagued horse-drawn
wagons was enormous. With timber abundant, plank roads could be built cheaply
and quickly, and investors were promised they could double or triple their
investment.”
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Glenn Coin of The
Post-Standard, published in Syracuse, N.Y., remarked: “Money
flowed; trees fell. Farmers could get crops to buyers in growing cities. Plank
roads were even called ‘farmers’ railroads’ that would let a farmer haul
produce to market ‘in weather when he would otherwise be imprisoned at home.”
The U.S. guru of plank roads was a civil engineer from Syracuse – George Geddes. He went to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1836 to travel on the first plank road built in North America. Geddes was absolutely infatuated by the smoothness of his ride and was determined to help build the first plank road in the United States.
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It was completed in 1846, running north out of Syracuse past Oneida Lake to Central Square, a distance of 16.5 miles.
Geddes’ project attracted the attention of progressive politicians in North Carolina – back-to-back 1840s governors John Motley Morehead and William Alexander Graham. It also attracted major investors such as brothers Jonathan Worth and Dr. John Milton Worth of Randolph County.
The Worth family business interests in Asheboro would profit greatly from building a 129-mile plank road from the famous Market House in Fayetteville in Cumberland County to the Moravian settlement at Bethania in Forsyth County.
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The route selected by the Fayetteville & Western Plank Road Company in 1849 ran diagonally through their home county. The wooden road, which was the longest in the entire world, was completed in 1854. In a sense, it was the nation’s first extended “main street.”
Fayetteville was strategically located on the Cape Fear River, where barges carried goods downriver to the port at Wilmington.
Dr. Troy L. Kickler, a noted historian and author, said: “Many North Carolinians were excited about the possibilities of plank road construction. The spirit of progress was everywhere in the state. There were 84 plank roads chartered in North Carolina during this time.
However, only about a dozen plank roads were actually built in the state, totaling about 500 miles by 1860.
Eastern North Carolina had two plank roads. One connected Clinton in Sampson County to Warsaw in Duplin County, spanning a distance of about 14 miles. The other ran between Greenville in Pitt County and Wilson in Wilson County, about 36 miles.
Dr. Kickler explained: “Once construction began on the plank roads, public enthusiasm waned. People realized road construction was an arduous task, requiring more effort, money, and maintenance than previously thought.”
“As with any type of construction, the skill and speed of work crews, the accessibility of raw materials and the weather determined the time needed to build a plank road,” he said. A team of 15 men could lay 650 feet a day, less than one mile a week.
Jonathan Worth served several years as the Fayetteville & Western superintendent. It quickly became apparent to him that considerable sums would have to be spent regularly on plank road repairs, said L. McKay Whatley, a Randolph County historian and author. As one example, in 1857, “the cost of repairs was $20,388.72, while the tolls collected totaled only $15,966.69.”
“With the onset of the
Civil War in 1861, upkeep of the plank roads was soon abandoned,” Whatley said.
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