Moriah's wooden highway: To the lake shore via plank road

PORT HENRY | Before macadam was developed for paving road surfaces, 18th- and 19th-century travelers endured muddy and dusty dirt roads hacked out of the wilderness. Many early American roads followed native and game trails, with others being developed by farmers and even lumberjacks with their own self-interests in mind. While the idea of building wooden or plank roads appeared first during the Roman Empire, the idea didn't catch on in North America until the mid-1800s. New York State was front and center in the plank road boom of the 19th century. This boom spanned the Empire State to the Wolverine State (Michigan) by the close of the Civil War. And enough plank roads were built around the Empire State alone to stretch all the way from Manhattan to San Francisco. "The first plank road in North America led out from Toronto... (with) the first plank road in the U.S. built in North Syracuse, New York, to transport salt and other goods," according to the University of California Transportation Center. "It appears to have copied earlier roads in Canada, which had copied Russian ones..." There were plenty of other 19th-century plank roads around the region such as the Warrensburg and Chester Plank Road (1850), the Saranac River Plank Road (1849), the Au Sable Plank Road (1848), and the Glens Falls and Lake George Plank Road (1848), to name a few. None of these roads ran more than 20 miles or so and there was no effort to create a large network of roadways. Famous among upstate New York's jostling "corduroy roads" made of puncheons (split logs or heavy slabs of timber) was the Moriah Plank Road which lasted from before the Civil War until the railroad arrived locally by the 1870s. This toll road, a short one when compared to other New York roads, used over a million boards cut in local mills. The mini highway of wood was built of pine, and hemlock rich in tannic acid, a plant polyphenol, that resisted rotting. It was designed for handling heavy horse-drawn wagons carrying iron ore from the mines in Port Henry to the shore of Lake Champlain (although local farmers and merchants were happy to transport their goods to the lake, too). By 1850, the Moriah Plank Road Company was organized to facilitate ore transportation from the Moriah, Mineville, and Wetherbee mines to docks on the shore. The Ticonderoga Historical Society has, in its archive, a rare ledger from the founders of the plank road. The old book reads, "We, the undersigned severally subscribe the several sums set opposite our respective names toward the stock for the construction of a plank road from the vicinity of the ore beds in the Town of Moriah to a point near the shore of Lake Champlain: George Sherman, $1,000; A.J. Rosseau, per J.B. Sherman, agent, $1,000.; John A. Lee, $1,000.; N.S. Storrs, $250.; S.M. and J.G. Witherbee, $100.; J.B. Spencer, $100.; Cyrenus Reed, $50.; D.E. Sanford, $50.; Willis E. Foster, $50.; Reuben Whallon, $100.; A.B. Waldo, and L.P. Cheney, $50. — Dated Aug. 30, 1850." According to the Ticonderoga Historical Society, the plank road was precisely surveyed and described in another document: "...Being in the Town of Moriah, Essex County, running thence south 42 degrees, east 12 rods (1 rod = 16.5 feet), thence south 60 degrees, east 12 rods, thence south 73 degrees, east 10 rods to a hemlock tree marked, thence south 59 degrees, east 20 rods to a stake, thence south 75 degrees east 48 rods to a stake, thence south 81 degrees, west 55 rods to near the corner of lots numbered 21 and 23, Iron Ore Tract, and to the highway running from the Sanford Ore Bed easterly from thence along the said highway and in the same and on the line of said lots easterly to the center of the highway leading from Moriah Four Corners to Elizabethtown, 144 rods, from thence south in the center of the last mentioned highway as the road runs southerly towards Moriah Corners 964 rods to the center of the of the last mentioned highway as it runs from Moriah Corners to Port Henry 731 rods and seven lines to a Pine tree standing in and near the center of said highway in Port Henry and near the residence of James (Donald) in Port Henry aforesaid; we also further determine that road shall be four rods wide and that the line of the survey above described shall be the center of said road to be built by said company..." The toll road had its share of financial problems over the years. The Ticonderoga Historical Society states that, "if the toll rate on the plank road was high or not is not stated in the records, but it is presumed that because of the fee, trails were being used, again, and at the meeting of directors on June 1859, the fee of 35 cents was reduced to 31 cents for a single wagon team. Evidently, the company found that the road was not used enough and tolls were driving some (people) to use trails again. This brought on the decision of April 29, 1864, to abandon one of the two toll gates and to continue to maintain... (the) one near Hiram McKenzie's residence." But the end eventually came for the company. On Jan. 16, 1875, "the last minutes of the Moriah Plank Road Company appear, and what happened after this meeting does not show in the book," the Ticonderoga Historical Society reports. Today, all that remains of the plank road is but a reminder of its past glory: a state historical marker at the southwest corner of Broad and College streets in Port Henry.

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Moriah's wooden highway: To the lake shore via plank road

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