1 History of Lake Otsego Roads Hugh MacDougall, Cooperstown Village Historian [email protected] October 2014 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 1 Turnpikes ................................................................................................................................................. 2 Tolls ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 Turnpike Corporations ......................................................................................................................... 3 Stagecoaches: ....................................................................................................................................... 3 Livestock ............................................................................................................................................. 3 The Great Western Turnpikes: ............................................................................................................ 3 Plank Roads: ............................................................................................................................................ 3 Macadam Roads: ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Early Local Roads ....................................................................................................................................... 4 East Side of Lake Otsego ............................................................................................................................ 5 The Second Great Western Turnpike .......................................................................................................... 6 West Side of Lake Otsego........................................................................................................................... 6 Otsego Lake Turnpike: ............................................................................................................................ 6 Fort Plain and Cooperstown Plank Road Company: ............................................................................... 7 Back to Dirt: ............................................................................................................................................ 7 Becoming State Route 80: ....................................................................................................................... 8 Slope Stabilization on Route 80: ............................................................................................................. 8 Pesticides along Route 80: ...................................................................................................................... 8 Fracking and Lake Otsego: ..................................................................................................................... 8 Introduction This is a quick introduction to the roads that have surrounded Lake Otsego since the late 1700s, compiled from a variety of sources. It does not pretend to be complete, but should give an idea of how the road network serving the lake developed over the years. I begin, however, with a brief introduction to some of the concepts which relate to the topic. 2 Included are information on the roads and turnpikes which once served the Village of Cooperstown. Today New York Route 80 between Cooperstown and Springfield, a two-lane, twisty, road generally near the Western shore of Lake Otsego remains the principal means of access to and from the North. Turnpikes1 Early roads were usually built and maintained by local governments, but their abilities to do so effectively was limited. Beginning about 1800 in the United States therefore, there began to appear “turnpikes”—privately built and maintained roads created by corporations, and often running for considerable distances. They were supported by tolls, collected at periodic intervals along the road, where passage would be blocked by a bar or gate across it known as a “turnpike” to ensure that travelers paid the required amount. New York State had more of these Turnpike Corporations than any other, not all of which actually produced usable roads. It must be remembered that before the advent of canals and (especially) railroads, roads were the only means of transporting both humans and livestock, and for a time—peaking in the 1830s—turnpikes were the major form of long-distance travel in New York State. In her History of Springfield, Kate M. Gray quotes from a lecture given in 1903 to the Herkimer County Historical Society, by the Hon. Myron A. McKee: “It was customary for teamsters to carry their own provisions and provender for their teams. The charges for such at the taverns were very moderate, not more than one shilling and six pence for lodging and hay. Great droves of all kinds of animals required for the city, cattle, sheep, swine and even turkeys were frequently seen. Turkeys in large flocks were not bad to drive, except that in the after part of the day, if they neared an orchard, they were apt to take to the trees, and no one could stop them; their day’s march was done.”2 Tolls: The amount of tolls collected at each toll-gate were set by the State in its Charters, and the following may be considered as typical3: Rates: 20 Sheep or hogs: 4 cents. 20 Cattle, horses, or mules: 10 cents. Horse and rider: 3 cents. Wheeled carriage with 1 horse: 6 cents, each additional horse 2 cents. Four-wheeled carriage or wagon with 2 horses, mules, or oxen: 9 cents, each additional animal 3 cents. Sleigh, or sled with 1 horse: 2 cents, with 2 horses, mules, or oxen: 3 cents, each additional animal 2 cents. 1 Daniel Klein and John Majewski, Economy, Community and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Transportation Center, Working Paper No. 76, June 1991; Daniel Klein and John Majewski, “Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth-Century America”, E.H. Net Encyclopedia, February 10, 2008. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/turnpikes-and-toll-roads-in-nineteenth-century-america/ 2 Kate M. Gray, The History of Springfield, Chapter II (“Roads and Trails”), Cooperstown: General James Clinton Chapter No. 640, Daughters of American Revolution, 1935, p. 29, 3 Law passed April 24, 1837 for The Fort Plain and Otsego McAdam or Hard Road Company. Chapter 260, Laws of 1837. 3 Exemptions: Half price for any person residing within 2 miles of the toll-gate; no toll for persons going or returning from religious worship. Turnpike Corporations: Turnpikes were generally built and administered by stockholding corporations organized on the same lines as other commercial entities, with Boards of Directors and stockholders who bought shares entitling them to a certain proportion of any profits. However, they rarely made profits and—which may seem strange to us today—were rarely expected to do more than pay their expenses of construction and maintenance. Rather, both stockholders and Directors hoped that the turnpikes would benefit the economies of the towns, villages, and individuals along their routes, and to buy stocks in them was often considered more as a civic duty giving prestige to the buyer. Stagecoaches: .Not all of turnpikes’ use was by individuals, on horseback, with carriages or wagons, or otherwise. Rather, much of their traffic for human beings was by “stage” coaches—owned and operated by complex “stage coach” companies which not only owned and operated the coaches themselves, but provided drivers and horses, and periodic “stages” along the route where exhausted horses could be exchanged for fresh ones. Often hotels or inns grew up around these stage points. Stage coaches usually ran on publicly advertised schedules, and charged standardized fares which might be set by State authorities.4 Livestock: A significant portion of the “traffic” on most turnpikes consisted of cattle, sheep, or pigs being driven to market—since there were as yet no boats or vehicles capable of transporting them. The Great Western Turnpikes: The four sections of the so-called Great Western Turnpike, each a separate corporation, linked central New York State from East to West during the Turnpike age. :The First, chartered in 1799, ran for 52 miles from Albany to Cherry Valley, roughly following today’s US Route 20. The Second, chartered in 1801, ran for 45 miles from Cherry Valley to Sherburne, following (from Cooperstown on) today’s State Route 80. The Third, chartered in 1803, ran for 90 miles from Cherry Valley to Manlius. The Fourth, chartered in 1805, extended the Second for 30 miles from Sherburne to Homer. For some fifty years these four Turnpikes dominated much of east-west transport between Albany and central New York State.5 With the coming of canals (notably the Erie Canal opened in 1825), and of Railroads (which reached from Albany to Utica by 1836) big east-west turnpikes gradually lost their utility, and in the 1840s and 1850s many were abandoned by their owners and turned over to local governments. This frequently led to a marked deterioration in their care and maintenance. Plank Roads:6 Beginning in the late 1840s a new form of road came into being—the plank road. These generally ran from north to south, to connect up with canals or railroads, and were considered for a short time as the 4 See generally,