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From the podictionary website ( http://podictionary.com/?p=316 ):
The turnpike that made a road a turnpike road was a toll booth. Now a days toll roads collect their tolls with electronic chips sending radio signals and automatically charging your credit card but it is still common to find toll booths where a mechanical barrier swings down to block a car's progress until it's paid the toll.
An earlier version of these barriers, from a time before cars, were intended less to collect tolls, but to keep horses off the footpaths. These were constructed like turnstiles with a cross of timbers that rotated as you pushed your way through like a revolving door. It's clear why such a device might have the epithet "turn" applied to it, but why turnpike? It seems that the earliest form of turnpike of them all was not a type of toll booth or turnstile, but a kind of barbed fence.
A pike was a sharp spear type affair and if you planted a bunch of them across the road they would have the effect of turning away an oncoming enemy. So originally 600 years ago turn pike meant a repelling spear, the name just seemed to fit so well that it was applied to the later road barrier that had arms that turned, and so on to toll booths. But what does all that have to do with the fish you ask. Well a pike that swims in a lake is so called because he has a sharp pointed head, sort of like those spears.
Blaze Rogahn
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How were turnpikes paid for?
People paid for the turnpikes when they used the road.
Why did John McAdam invent turnpikes?
John McAdam didn't invent turnpikes. He was a road engineer who began working on turnpikes about 1800. The first English turnpike was established in 1663.
How do the original turnpikes compare with the roads we call turnpikes today?
They both collected money to pay for something.
What was the greatest drawback to turnpikes in the early 19th century?
Maintenance was expensive and traffic was spotty on these early toll roads. "Shunpikes", normal roadways, often paralleled the turnpikes so the cheap people would take them instead of paying the few pennies required to travel the turnpikes. Most turnpikes did not make much money.
Who invented turnpikes?
jon law
How did private companies finance turnpikes?
They collected tolls from travelers.
What is turnpikes?
A turnpike is a road that u pay tu travel on
Fines for not paying toll fee on Oklahoma turnpikes?
100.00
What is a turnpikes?
A turnpike is a road that u pay tu travel on
Turnpikes have impact on westward Expansion?
There were no turnpikes in the 1800's. The routes taken were wagon paths and no roads will go across the country until the hi way systems were begun in 1950.
What were the turnpikes in the 1800s?
At a time when public roads are little more than rutted, muddy tracks, turnpikes are roads with an improved surface. A toll was charged, so another name is a toll road.
What is the difference between a freeway and a expressway?
Turnpikes have tolls and freeways dont.
