I was researching the new railroad that is leasing the tracks near my home and stumbled upon information on North Carolina’s first road improvement project, the plank road. It is what it sounds like, a road paved with wooden planks ranging from 8 to 30 feet wide. Plank roads were an affordable alternative to building railroads, if not as long lasting.
Below is a good summary of plank roads from RootsWeb. I’ll also reformat the text from the North Carolina Historical Commission’s 1939 story on plank roads and post it.
The Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road
Many people have noticed the historical marker for the Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road on Dickinson Avenue and wondered what it was all about. With the increased commerce and agricultural interests in North Carolina in the 1840’s, transportation became a problem. The use of plank roads in northern states had proved successful and they began to be introduced in North Carolina as the answer to its transportation difficulties.
The Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road, the third plank road in the State, was a profitable venture, though short lived. It followed roughly the same route as old Highway 264, down Dickinson Avenue to Five Points, then up Evans Street to First Street, then east to Reade Street and down to the steamboat landing [now Town Common landing].The road was built by the Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road Company which was chartered Dec. 23, 1850 at the 1850 session of the NC General Assembly. On Jan. 1, 1851, they began to open books of subscription and individual shares were $25 with $2 having to be paid upon subscribing. By Feb. 5, 1851, the conditions of the charter were completed and a date was set for the first stockholders meeting.
The first meeting was held in Greenville on Feb. 20, 1851, when it was reported that 30 shares were subscribed in Raleigh, 64 shares in Wilson, 1016 shares in Washington and 1329 in Greenville. The first officers of the Company were Alfred Moye, president, Charles Greene, treasurer and Goold Hoyt, clerk. The directors were Joseph Potts, B. F. Havens, and R. L. Myers of Beaufort County; Thomas Hanrahan, William Bernard, Sr. and F. B. Satterwaite of Pitt County; John W. Farmer of Edgecombe County and Thomas D. Hogg of Wake County. The sale of shares went to both men who were interested in community development and financial profit and to farmers who lived along the road who would use it to transport their crops to market.
The directors chose Mason Loomis as head engineer and portable sawmills were purchased in Baltimore, Md. On April 5, 1851, Loomis arrived in Greenville and began surveying and grading for the road began a few days later. The Company advertised to the local citizens that they were giving $12.50 per month for the use of able bodied negro men. By mid-September 1851, two miles of the road was completed, several bridges were built and 10 miles was ready for plank.
The second annual stockholders meeting was held in Feb. 1852 and Alfred Moye declined reelection and R. L. Myers was appointed president.
The Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road was constructed from heart pine planks, eight feet long, nine inches wide and three inches thick. The planks were placed on heavy pine sills or sleepers. After the sills were filled around with dirt and the planks were nailed in place, sand was put on the planks. There were “turnouts” of wider road built along the road for rest and passage around slower traffic. The plank road coming into Greenville was 30 feet wide.
The construction of the plank road was done by two “gangs of 15-20 men.” The foreman got $1.00 per day and the hands got between 40-50 cents per day. Two dollars per day were paid for teams of two horses, including the driver. The cost of construction of the Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road was about $1,500 per mile.
The Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road charter contained a number of interesting rules. The company could start collecting tolls after five miles of road were completed. The profits from the tolls collected, however, could not exceed 20 percent of the capital of the company in any one year. This was to keep the company from taking advantage of the farmers using the plank road.
The charter said that the road could not “be less than eight feet nor more than 60 feet wide” and toll gates could not take up more than two acres of land. The tolls for passage on the plank road were a half cent per mile for a man on horseback; one cent for a one-horse team; two cents for a two-horse team; three cents for a three-horse team; and four cents for a six-horse team.
Toll houses were located about 10 miles apart and kept by an employee of the company for a salary of $150 per year. The toll houses were placed so passage around them was difficult, but travelers getting around paying the toll, became a problem. In the 1852 session of the NC General Assembly, an amendment to the original charter was passed setting out punishment for non-payment of tolls.
The new amendment read that if a traveler should try to evade the toll, they would be fined $5.00 if a white person, and if a slave or free person of color, to be whipped not to exceed 20 lashes and the fine. Tolls on the bridges of the plank road were $1.00 if the traveler had not traveled five miles, 50 cents if he had not traveled five miles.
By March 1, 1852, about 12 1/2 miles of the plank road was completed and the road progressed until its completion to Wilson in March 1853. The road never made it to Raleigh.
The third annual stockholders meeting was held in February 1853 and Alfred Moye was reelected president and in March 1853 the Company offered for sale its three portable circular steam saw mills.The Plank Road seems to disappear from the records until May 1857, when the newspaper reported the Plank Road was rapidly decaying and doubted it could be kept up. In Oct. 1857, J. J. B. Pender, mail contractor on the Greenville-Wilson route, complained of high tolls and left the road, choosing to run the stages over the County roads. It was reported that a road was developed along the Plank Road by people who refused to pay the tolls.
On Feb. 18, 1859, the superintendent of the Plank Road reported to the directors that the plank road was in wretched condition, almost impassible and too expensive to maintain. The Company had $2,000 in a reserve fund and decided to sell the road at public auction and divide the assets among the stockholders. If they couldn’t sell it legally, they would abandon it.
The road eventually disappeared only remembered in memory. In Dec. 1889, the Plank Road in Greenville was named “Dickinson Avenue” in honor of Marshall Dickinson, a noted Greenville citizen. In March 1908, when the city was having drain sewers put down on Evans Street, preparatory to having the street paved with brick, workmen found the Plank Road about two feet down. The section they found was like a solid floor, the timbers being thick and well preserved. It was so hard getting through the timbers that it was decided to put the drain sewer along the side of the old Plank Road and not in the center of the street as originally planned.