• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

The Messenger-Inquirer Keith Lawrence Column: Keith Lawrence

Posted on: Thursday, 26 January 2006, 15:00 CST

By Keith Lawrence, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

Jan. 26--Sometime in the next 18 months, the state will remove the toll booths on the William H. Natcher and John James Audubon parkways.

And after 125 years, Owensboro will be a toll-free town.

Toll roads here began in 1882, when the Kentucky General Assembly authorized the Daviess County Gravel Road Co. to build roads.

The fact that tolls would be charged once the first two miles of gravel was laid was of little concern at first.

The 19th century was nearly over. And finally, the county would have roads that weren't dusty in dry weather and muddy in wet.

For every five miles of gravel, the state said, the company could erect a toll booth.

The first was on what's now East Fourth Street.

That was on the Hardinsburg Gravel Road, which extended to Thruston, where it forked.

The same company built the Leitchfield Gravel Road with a toll house near today's Chautauqua Park.

By 1887, there was competition.

The Owensboro and Henderson Gravel Road Co. was building a road to Sorgho.

And community leaders boasted that the gravel roads led to development. Many new houses were under construction all the way to the Narrows Bridge, as Moseleyville was known at the time.

But it wasn't long before folks got tired of having to pay to go to Owensboro. And they complained that that the roads weren't kept in good shape.

Sort of like now.

It wasn't long until farmers and civic leaders were both complaining that the toll roads were "a Chinese wall around Owensboro."

So, one night in July 1896, someone put a torch to a toll gate on the Henderson Road.

Toll gate burnings spread across Kentucky that year. But no more were burned in Daviess County.

In 1898, farmers again demanded that the toll gates come down. They swore they would pay no more tolls.

The wrangling continued until April 1902, when Daviess Fiscal Court agreed to buy all the toll roads "if the price is right."

At the polls that year, voters approved free roads by a margin of 3,002 to 2,192.

But negotiations between the county and toll road operators broke down.

In 1903, the U.S. government stepped into the fray, forbidding the collection of tolls on its mail wagons.

Finally, in 1903, the county negotiated the purchase of five miles of the Leitchfield Road, nine miles of the Hardinsburg and Pleasant Valley roads, 3.5 miles of the Main Street Road and seven miles of the Henderson Road -- a combined 24.5 miles -- for a combined $21,488.

Henderson County had paid $60,000 for 19 miles of gravel road there.

Finally, the toll road issue was settled.

Instead of tolls, property owners paid 20 cents per $100 more on their taxes.

Today, the name of Tollgate Precinct in eastern Daviess County commemorates the struggle for free roads.

But after nearly 70 years of free roads, the state began building toll roads again in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, Owensboro remains the only city in Kentucky where all the four-lanes have tolls.

But none of the toll booths are inside the county.

That's a tribute to the battle for free roads a century ago.

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Messenger-Inquirer

More News in this Category