The arrival of the modern limited-access US highway system was an era-defining event, with distances shortened in ways previously unimaginable. Before the US Interstate Highway Act of 1956 unleashed the construction of a massive nationwide system of interstate freeways, some states had already built or committed to build turnpikes, financed by user fees (tolls). These turnpikes, which date back to 1940 (Pennsylvania), were a preview of freeways to come.
This vintage postcard gallery features a number of these state turnpikes, starting with the Ohio Turnpike toll station going west, in PA.
Massachusetts Turnpike, Sterling, MA.
Ohio Turnpike toll plaza.
New Jersey Turnpike, NJ.
Gateway to the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Petersburg, OH.
Ohio Turnpike, Graceful Arch Bridge.
Approaching Blue Water Bridge, Port Huron, MI.
Kansas Turnpike.
Kentucky Turnpike, at the Elizabethtown Toll Plaza, KY.
Allegheny Tunnel, Pennsylvania Turnpike, PA.
Where is all the traffic?
Not born yet.
Interesting looking at all those toll booths which have been fast disappearing. I tip my hat to the developers of the modern technology that led to EZ Pass. Fast, convenient, and saved untold millions of taxpayer dollars in the elimination of booths and collectors. Perhaps the greatest boon to traffic management in the last 20 years.
The two closest toll roads to me (200 intercounty connector and Dulles toll road) no longer even require you to have an EZ Pass RFID transponder in your car; they just electronically read your number plates as you drive by.
The Nj Turnpike photo has me slightly confused. The vehicle lane, second from the right, looks as though a truck is facing the opposite direction. Is the vehicle possibly being towed?
This appears to be a maintenance truck. The gate is closed with a chain as shown in this enlarged photo.
Logically, I know that electronic toll collection is superior all around compared to old-fashioned toll booths with their tickets, cash, coins and/or tokens. On the other hand, I do miss seeing the toll plazas – with their marquees advertising them to be the one state or another turnpike. It’s just not the same whizzing under a stanchion.
Last year I drove through Maine, and was surprised that the Maine Turnpike still has toll booths for drivers without EZ Pass. That was the first time I’d seen toll booths in quite a while.
The Florida Turnpike near Orlando had toll booths coming off ramps last year (if my memory about location is correct). However, it was semi-automated where one had to dump in correct change…or use the other lane where a picture was taken of your license plate.
The New Hampshire turnpike (I 95) still has a few lanes allocated to cash – because….NH…..where they still have to cater to people who would refuse to get the EZpass or to have their plates photographed (just as they also cater to people who won’t wear seatbelts); and also the state probably doesn’t have the funds to tear down the plazas. But here in MA, we’ve removed every plaza on every highway.
There are still, last time I checked, baskets into which you can throw coins on exits for the Dulles Toll Road (267) in VA. I’ve got to imagine those are on borrowed time.
Amusingly, I live just a few miles from the Dulles Toll Road, but I haven’t driven on it in about 20 years.
Just checked Google StreetView and it seems the coin baskets were removed a few years ago. Maybe because the base toll back then appears to have been $3.25, and I’m guessing that few people carry 13 quarters around with them.
The pandemic, did away with them for good. ((like the Chspeake Bay Bridge, in “MD”))
Driving from SC in 1969, tolls started in Petersburg VA on 85/95 and were fairly continuous all the way to my destination outside of Boston on the Mass Turnpike. There were a few ways to avoid segments of the toll roads. Today there aren’t as many tolls, but the bridges into NYC via 95, etc. have high one-way tolls. But Delaware is the highest per mile from the Delaware Memorial bridge into Maryland on 1-95.
I vividly remember these early Turnpikes, to answer Chris’ question, along with few or no center dividers the toll booths were set up to work in both directions and signal lamps would reverse the traffic flow in the center booths as necessary for a few lanes .
Interestingly the Ca. 118 (Simi Valley) freeway didn’t have center guard rails for even and daily horrific collisons including head – ons were the nor until only a few years ago .
-Nate
The spiffy, yellow, “Chevy” in “MI” really pops in the pic. Been through that “Ohio”, gateway (from PA) only once.(each way though)
“1981”, worlds fair excursion.
Anyone ID the green and yellow truck in photo #5? Tried enlarging but pic is too grainy.
I believe it’s an IH Emeryville wearing Mayflower Van Lines colors.
Or better yet a 3000 White.
I think Emeryville is right, looks too tall to be a White 3000. When was the last time either of those were seen outside an antique truck show? Or a Mayflower van, for that matter…
It’s a White 3000. The windshield shape is distinctive. Also, it’s narrower than an Emeryville, which is why the sleeper is wider than the cab. That was a distinctive feature of the White with a sleeper.
Our 2015 VW still has slots for individual coins in the glove box lid. I stuck a few quarters in there when we got the car, for parking meters as all tolls here (bridges only, or HOV lanes) have been transponderized for decades. But I rarely use meters either, and when I do it’s invariably in the car that has no loose change in it. Or it has pennies or nickels that only provide seconds of parking.
I still keep coins (quarters) in the ashtrays of my cars. For meters when I encounter one that uses a different app than I have installed (THAT’s a topic for its own post!) and would rather stuff in coins than spend 10 minutes standing at the curb installing some stupid app.
Besides, where else am I going to use those damn quarters?
“air pump”, or “car vac”. I’ll be doing the “vac” in the next few days.
Altho not a state turnpike, I recall one parkway which collected enough tolls to pay off its bond.
It then closed up at least one toll station, and we drove along, free of charge.
This was in the Westchester County (NY) section of the the Hutchinson River Parkway.
It was around 1962, and the toll was only a dime or a quarter.
Virginia did that on I-95 as well. I-95 was tolled roughly between Fredericksburg and Richmond, and the state actually kept its promise to eliminate the tolls once the bond was paid off.
That would never happen these days. Now in Virginia we have private toll roads where the state gave a sweetheart 70-year deal to a company to operate them. The tolls are exorbitant, and the penalties for accidentally wandering onto the toll lanes without an EZ Pass are even worse. Really shameful, and little more than a gift to the very wealthy and the politicians that got lobbied by this company.
Yes, the “Trans Urban”, company that (allegedly) operates the “toll function” is the reason I won’t get an “EZ pass”.
I think all of the Kentucky turnpikes (“parkways”) had tolls removed when the bonds were paid off. The Kentucky Turnpike in the photo above became plain old I-65 in 1975. But there were many others that weren’t even worthy of incorporation into the Interstate Highway System that are now free: The Cumberland Parkway, the Blue Grass Parkway, the Audubon Parkway, the Mountain Parkway, the Pennyrile Parkway, and a couple of others.
Now thats what I would call a motorway system, one was begun in NZ around the time I was born, now roughly 70 years later the longest stretch goes from my old home burg to the off ramp to where NZ Skyliner is living, tolling is automatic to your registration number and thou shalt not exceed 110kmh, which is a shame, even my old Hillman will hold 110kmh easily, my Citroen is still winding up in 3rd at that speed if you press the angry button.
That nice new section was the designated HPMV route which had to be closed and rebuilt 50+ tonne rigs destroyed the slow lane within weeks, as one of those guys mandated to use that route I watched it disintegrate in real time, road building specs have fallen behind the loads they have to support.
Seeing tollbooths was not a thing for me growing up. In my lifetime Missouri has no toll roads, nor did Illinois outside of Chicago. Only when we traveled did I see tollbooths and I wondered how hard it would be to take an alternate route and avoid them.
Granted, I’ve seen lots of tollbooths and/or tollroads since then in many states, but having to pay a toll is a rarity for me – even though I just paid a toll to Kansas for driving the eastern end of I-70.
Note the darkened middle of the right lane at Graceful Arch Bridge.
I suspect this is from the road draft tubes of engines working hard to climb that grade.
Yup! The dark strip down the middle was a normal sight all over the country. Do they still warn motorcyclists in training to stay out of the middle because of the oil slick?
The Ohio Turnpike Arch Bridge is just south of Cleveland and east of the deep valley of the Cuyahoga River. The bridge was originally Ohio Rt. 8… Rt. 8 today is a six-lane expressway nearby. For me as a kid, after passing the boring flat farmland of Indiana and western Ohio, these were welcome sights, foreshadowing the interesting scenery of the PA Turnpike.
Brings back memories of the toll roads in New Jersey and throwing coins into baskets or handed to a toll taker. After moving to California, in 1966, never saw a toll road again. Parents moving to the Bay Area, in 1972, brought me into contact with toll bridges. Today you just drive through, a photo of your license plate is taken so the state can mail you a bill.
I wish I had taken a picture f the empty toll booths on I-95 in Connecticut when they removed the tolls in the 80s.
We avoided tolls when possible in New York, but had to pay to visit relatives in New Jersey and sometimes Long Island.
Here in Oregon I think I’ve paid tolls only two or three times crossing the Columbia at Bridge of the Gods and Hood River.
There were not a lot of toll roads in Ontario when I was growing up. I only remember the Burlington Skyway, which cut across the end of Lake Ontario. We lived in Toronto and my parents took us there when it opened. I remember seeing my first 1958 Oldsmobile as we were going over the bridge in our 57 Plymouth. In Quebec there was the Laurentian Autoroute going north from Montréal. My sister in law had her first MGB totaled there when she was stopped at the toll booth and the guy behind did not stop.
No toll roads or bridges here in Scotland – maybe there’d be fewer potholes if there were – but somehow I doubt it.
As a Cleveland native, the Ohio Turnpike was all very new during my childhood. Of late, I’ve enjoyed reading its history through the day’s newspapers–the proposals and consensus-building, the “how will it pay for itself,” and then big discussions of the routing—including the unavoidable fact that, the closer the Turnpike was placed to “Greater Cleveland,” the more expensive acreage would be.
There was a proposal to “reverse” things—-have the two westbound lanes to the south, rather than to the north (our accustomed “drive on the right” pattern), which evidently simplified matters at plazas and elsewhere. And then a little nip-and-tuck southwest of Cleveland, near its present Metroparks, to avoid some forested footage. I suppose it’s a book few care to read in 2025, but it’d be fun to research and write.
Speaking of which: writer Stephen Ambrose (WWII, etc.) at one point pledged a bit history of the Interstate System, which he and his helpers would comprehensively research…did anything come of that?
For fun, here’s Ohio Turnpike’s western terminus opening, 1955:
One more thing re Ohio Turnpike: someone’s protest involved computed the total farm acreage it would wipe out–an impressive number, whatever it was.
Here’s the Ohio-Pennsylvania hookup, brand new:
Having grown up near Youngstown, Ohio and having relatives in the Greater Cleveland area and friends in Pittsburgh, I’m rather familiar with the ‘pikes around that area. Even today, when I go home from Western Michigan, I spend a lot of time on the Ohio Turnpike.
I used to travel frequently for work and much of the printing industry has headquarters for equipment manufacturers in Chicago. It was always a necessity when traveling to Chicago to have lots of spare change for all of the freeways around the Greater Chicago area. I was happy that when traveling to Minnesota last autumn to see that many of the toll roads around Chicago had changed over to plate readers for tolls. They still had a few booths open for folks who wanted to pay cash.
Pennsylvania has also followed suit, but with fewer options to pay with cash in the event you don’t want your plate read. Ohio lagged behind in the change to electronic tolls. However, I will travel home here in the very near future and will get to see the progress Ohio has made in regard to plate readers for tolls.
For what it’s worth, I never thought the EZ Pass (and it’s relatives throughout the US, especially as not all of them had reciprocal agreements) was a good deal for the occasional traveler. I’d rather pay cash at that point, I don’t want to pay for a piece of electronics in my vehicle that I would only use once or twice a year…
I do recall that was an argument against E-ZPass early on, but at least in MA we pay nothing for the transponder. One does have to initially fund it ($20), but tolls are deducted from that initial balance and there is no charge to simply have the device. Further, MA E-ZPass holders receive a discount on tolls on MA highways…or maybe more the case, non-MA E-ZPass holders pay a premium to travel on MA highways.
I think that the “free” transponder is not something that all states offer.
I have driven the Pennsylvania Turnpike from near Pittsburgh to Breezewood and if memory serves, it was around $40 before I got an EZ Pass transmitter. Now I know where the term highway robbery originated. Or maybe it was on the tollways around Chicago, which wiped out $25 in change within a couple of days.
Had an uncle who was a toll booth collector at Petersburg VA on I-85/I-95, just south of Richmond. In the early 70s I had been at college in Miami, but Dad thought I should go to East Caroline Univ, his alma mater. Spent two unfortunate semesters and hated it (then went back to Miami). So I spent almost every weekend commuting to DC as my female roommate (Dad did not approve) father had been a diplomate in Moscow and she still had connections in DC. I would hold my breath every time I approached that toll booth hoping not to see my uncle as my Dad had no idea I was spending weekends in DC. Looking back I would think he could figure out something was amiss as I was still using his gasoline credit card but he never questioned the gas charges and I was stupid not to pay cash to hid my travel expenses.
I lived in Ottawa Ontario for 18 years and crossed the border at the Thousand Islands Bridge, just pass Ogdensburg, NY. Had to pay the toll to get into the US and out of the US. That old bridge had to have been paid off decades earlier. Going into the US those customs agents treated me like a traitor when they saw my Canadian permanent residence card and lost count how many times I was questioned and even had my car searched a few times. On the return to Canada those border agents were always so nice and friendly. At least at that bridge toll I could pay in either US $ or Canada $. I always paid in CAD $.