A history of roads in Virginia: America’s First Road Law

Much manual labor was the requirement for building and maintaining early roads.

The need for improving roads to better serve the social and economic life of the colony was among the matters facing members of the House of Burgesses as they met in Jamestown in September 1632.

Before adjournment, they had passed the first highway legislation in American history, an act providing, in the language of the day, that, “Highwayes shall be layd in such convenient places as are requisite accordinge as the Gov. and Counsell or the commissioners for the monthlie corts shall appoynt, or accordinge as the parishioners of every parish shall agree.”

The first legislation also required each man in the colony to work on the roads a given number of days each year, a custom dating at least from the feudal period of the Middle Ages in England, or to pay another to work in his place. This labor law, to remain in effect for more than 250 years, provided the main source of workers for road and bridge construction.

Twenty-five years later, probably in March 1657, the colony’s basic road law was broadened to provide “that surveyors of highwaise and maintenance for bridges be yearly kept and appointed in each countie cort respectively…”

In 1661, the surveyors were empowered to select locations for roads, choosing “the most convenient wayes to Church, to the Court, to James Towne, and from County to County.” By the end of the 17th century, many miles of primitive roads threaded throughout Tidewater Virginia. The colony’s population had reached 70,000. While horseback  was the most frequent means of overland travel, horse-drawn carts became more numerous, and some carriages and coaches gradually appeared.

In 1705, the legislature passed a new road act providing for “making, clearing, and repairing the highways and for clearing the rivers and creeks… for the more convenient traveling and carriage, by land, of tobaccos merchandise, or other things within this dominion… ”

The new road act provided for further extension of the road system and required that the roads “be kept well cleared from woods and bushes, and the roots well grubbed up, at least thirty feet broad.” The new law also provided for skilled labor to erect bridges larger than could be built by the local surveyors, and when such a bridge was to cross a county line, its cost would be divided “proportionable to the number of tithables in each county.”

Other road laws came quickly in the early years of the 18th century. Owners of mill dams were required to provide a 10-foot passage on dams and spillways; it became mandatory for a county in which an iron furnace was operated to provide “good roads to be laid out and made from such works to the nearest place upon some navigable river or creek.” Establishment of public ferries was authorized by the legislature.

In 1716, Alexander Spotswood, regarded by many as perhaps the best of the colonial governors, led his “Knights of The Golden Horseshoe” up the summits of the “Great Mountains,” the Blue Ridge, and looked down in amazement at the splendor of the Shenandoah Valley. Spotswood, a former soldier, recognized that settlement of the valley could help protect eastern Virginia from hostile forces.

It was in the next quarter-century that the valley and much of the Piedmont, the rolling country between the mountains and Tidewater, were settled by pioneers moving inland and by many others who came down into the valley from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Extending north and south through the valley was a relatively good Indian path, called by various names including the Appalachian Warriors’ Path and the Shenandoah Hunting Path.

By the mid-18th century, it had been developed into the Great Wagon Road, which eventually led from Pennsylvania southward through the valley and on to Georgia. Toward the southern end of the valley, the Great Wagon Road separated into two branches near Big Lick, later to become Roanoke. While one branch left the valley and went due south, the other continued west and crossed Cumberland Gap through the Allegheny Mountains at what now is the junction of the Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee borders. After Daniel Boone and a band of frontiersmen cleared a path into Kentucky about 1775, the western branch became known as the Wilderness Road, and it was to become the main pioneer route along which traveled the first waves of the great migration to the West.

East of the mountains, two principal routes led from where Richmond stands todaydeep into the interior. One was a path to the settlements that were to become Lynchburg and Roanoke, a course now followed approximately by U.S. Routes 60 and 460. The other was the Three-Chopt Road or Three-Notched Road to Albemarle, where it connected with another path leading across the mountains at Afton and into the valley. Its name came from the way it was marked to guide travelers, with notches cut on the trees.

In his “Notes on the State of Virginia” in 1785, Thomas Jefferson described the approach to handling road matters. “The roads are under the government of county courts, subject to be controlled by the general court. They order new roads to be opened wherever they think them necessary. The inhabitants of the county are by them laid off into precincts, to each of which they allot a convenient portion of the public roads to be kept in repair. Such bridges as may be built without the assistance of artificers (skilled workers or craftsmen), they are to build. If the stream be such as to require a bridge of regular workmanship, the county employs workmen to build it at the expense of the whole county. If it be too great for the county, application is made to the General Assembly, who authorizes individuals to build it and to take a fixed toll from all passengers, or gives sanction to such other propositions as to them appear reasonable. Ferries are admitted only at such places as are particularly pointed out by law, and the rates of ferriage are fixed.”

Next up: Turnpike Era

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