# US Travel around 1776? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 16, 2013, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430 "2013-12-16T01:54:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430/21 "2013-12-17T03:58:28Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > The King ordered it built and it was built. [Wiki shows the path of the King’s Highway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Highway_%28Charleston_to_Boston%29). Right, the Governors reported to the King, if he ordered a road be built, it was. Maintaining the roads usually required more than a Royal fiat, though. They were often maintained by locals who lived near the roads, during that time just as we have (theoretically) the possibility of being drafted into the military men were usually conscripted into maintenance work for community assets for a week or two weeks out of the year. This mostly meant maintaining the roads. There were also some arterial toll roads in the colonies. I can’t remember them now but I know when I was learning about Virginia history in junior high there were several historically important toll roads connecting parts of the State. > [@md2000](#): > > The problem with any travel in those days was the effort. Your average Joe probably needed to work every day just to feed himself. Taking a week or two (each way) and buying food for himself and a horse all the way required some serious assets. They didn’t have American Express… maybe you could arrange for money to be waiting at a bank, friend, or business associate at the destination - things were a bit more organized than the middle ages - but along the way it was cash, which made you the traveller a prime target. This is why the Canterbury Tales travellers travelled in packs along the main road, you were less likely to be picked on as a large group, unless the highwaymen also were a large band of merry men. Actually a lot of what I’ve read about the colonial era suggests some surprising things about all of that: 1. Aside from the super wealthy, most people didn’t run up debts. The super wealthy usually did as part of their business operations (especially plantation owners but even large merchants needed credit.) 2. Because of #1, most people had more “cash on hand” and “cash savings” than people today. Currency would for most colonists (who were still overwhelmingly yeoman farmers) come intermittently but been spent infrequently. There was not a hyper-developed consumer culture like we have now. Consumer goods, yes, but not a consumer culture. Mind today most people have a lot of regular bills they can’t escape, and then most people decide they need to go into debt for things (house, car.) Yeoman farmers in the colonies had basically only one regular bill, which was their tax assessment on their land. Land was usually held in a family for generations so most farmers were not in debt to purchase their land. Plus, it would make less sense to go into debt to purchase land in that era anyway if all you want to do is live on it / work it. 3. Because of all of that, the colonies were actually the most egalitarian period on record in the United States. With the big caveat that records back then are not perfect. Much more egalitarian than today or any point in the 20th century, in terms of the distribution of financial resources. The colonies were also vastly wealthier than Europe per person, but the top tier of wealth in Europe was massive compared to colonial fortunes. [So Europe was wealthier, but with most of it concentrated in the hands of a small elite.] 4. Farms of the era afforded a lot of free time, actually. Like anything it had its peaks and troughs, but it’s very realistic for a colonial farmer who was doing well to take a few weeks to travel and stay with a cousin a week or more’s ride away. Now, something like taking a packet shit along the coast or going on a trans-Atlantic voyage was mostly only for the colonial elite. It wasn’t until the later 1810s/1820s that lines like the Black Ball Line popped up that allowed for some level of trans-Atlantic travel for the non-wealthy. Even then it would have been expensive and something most people would never do…later in the 19th century steamship lines began operation and they usually had the space to offer affordable third class berths that were more in the realistic price range for non-wealthy travelers. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430/22 "2013-12-17T04:32:17Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > … > > There were also some arterial toll roads in the colonies. I can’t remember them now but I know when I was learning about Virginia history in junior high there were several historically important toll roads connecting parts of the State… Little River Turnpike was one of the big Virginia toll roads and at one time went all the way from Aldie to Alexandria. The road still exists as a physical route today, but only a fraction of it is still called Little River Turnpike. It also included Duke Street in Alexandria, Main Street in Fairfax, and what is now US 50 between Fairfax and Aldie. Look at a map of NoVA sometime - it seems kind of odd that US 50 goes into Fairfax from the west and then turns at a sharp angle to the northeast while the “straight” path changes names. It’s because the entire east-west stretch was all Little River Tpk. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430/23 "2013-12-17T06:50:26Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > …Now, something like taking a packet shit along the coast… A floater…? 😃 So the King’s Highway was built, but what did it (or any street in any town) have for signage? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430/24 "2013-12-17T14:16:19Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > A floater…? 😃 > > So the King’s Highway was built, but what did it (or any street in any town) have for signage? 😛 I can’t say for sure, but the stereotypical depictions of “cross roads signage” dates back to cartoons drawn hundreds of years ago. I suspect because that is the sort of signage that actually existed. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430/25 "2013-12-17T17:00:00Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > A floater…? 😃 > > So the King’s Highway was built, but what did it (or any street in any town) have for signage? There were usually in most stretches, especially near villages, mile markers of stone. I don’t know about wooden signs, but I’m pretty sure directions could be asked for easily. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2013, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430/26 "2013-12-18T07:13:20Z")
While doing genealogical research on my ancestors in Virginia in the early 1700s, there was a note that the most common method of travel then was on rivers, as there were very few roads overland. Rather than to travel overland between points on different rivers, it was easier to go down one river until the tributaries met, then back up the other one. All the parishes in Louisiana between Baton Rouge and New Orleans lie on both sides of the Mississippi River, rather thanusing the river as a boundary. Clerics traveling on parish business found it easier to travel on water than on land, so installations within a parish needed to have a navigable waterway connecting outposts. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430/27 "2013-12-18T19:19:47Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > After the Civil War ended, Clara Barton’s Red Cross turned its attention to ameliorating issues in her home region of New England, starting with an 1870 shipment of five tons of the letter R to linguistically challenged regions in the Boston metro area. Heh. Reminds me of this 1996 _Onion_ piece: [http://www.cartalk.com/content/vowels-bosnia](http://www.cartalk.com/content/vowels-bosnia) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-travel-around-1776/676430.md?page=1)