Local History: Toll roads once common in NEPA
Decades before the Pennsylvania Turnpike was even an idea on paper, the roads of Northeast Pennsylvania were dotted with toll booths.
In the late 1800s, there was only one way into Scranton if you wanted to avoid paying a fee. A Scranton Times column from Dec. 16, 1939, listed several toll roads, including “the Drinker turnpike just outside the limits of Dunmore.” This road is credited with helping develop Dunmore and Daleville.
One of the bigger toll roads locally was the Scranton-Newton Turnpike, which a Dec. 14, 1948, article said “extended from Jackson Street in the Keyser Valley section” of Scranton and “up along the mountainside ... and on out to about Newton Center.” The Scranton-Newton Turnpike Co. began collecting tolls in 1896, according to the 1948 article. In December 1870, the company “declared a 20 percent dividend on its first year’s business.” Tolls were collected near Jackson Street.
At the time, there were few ways to get to Scranton from Newton Twp. Morgan Highway didn’t yet exist. Farmers in Newton and Ransom townships often sold their produce at curbside markets in Scranton. The toll road was an easy way to get into Scranton, even though travelers paid for the convenience.
Another major toll road: Northern Turnpike, which connected the Providence section of Scranton to the Abingtons, ran through the Notch in South Abington Twp., according to an Aug. 13, 1956, article. The toll gate was erected near Church Avenue on West Market Street.
There were also toll gates “on Elmhurst Boulevard in Nay Aug Park and on the other end of that highway” and another at Parker Street and Boulevard Avenue “leading down to the old Capouse works,” a Dec. 16, 1939, article said.
Folks in the Midvalley and Upvalley got to Scranton on the Providence-Carbondale Turnpike. It became a free road in late 1889, when Lackawanna County bought the road for $12,000. After the sale, “a delegation, loaded aboard two handsome barouches, traveled up the valley smashing toll house gates at Providence Corners, Dickson City, Blakely and Archbald,” a Nov. 7, 1957, article recounted. Afterward, the group had a celebratory banquet at the Harrison House in Carbondale.
The other toll roads, many of which struggled to turn a profit, followed in Providence-Carbondale Turnpike’s footsteps. The state paid about $5,500 for the Scranton-Newton Turnpike in 1900 and turned it into a free road.
The Northern Boulevard Co., which owned the Northern Turnpike, reached an agreement with the city to lift the tolls in exchange for an unknown sum for upkeep of the road.
The Elmhurst Boulevard toll road was the last of the big toll roads locally. It was designed by a private company to ease travel to a speedway, track and hotel owned by the same company, according to a Nov. 3, 1956, article. But the construction of the Scranton-Pocono Highway lessened the demand for travel on the toll road. By the end of the 1930s, the toll road was sold to the city and county for a small sum, the article from 1956 reported.
ERIN L. NISSLEY is an assistant metro editor at The Times-Tribune and has lived in the area for eight years.
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