From Crown Road to Freedom Road: King’s Highway to 19th Century Turnpikes

The King’s Highway was the main colonial road running 1,300 miles between Boston and Charleston from before the Revolution to the early 1800s. King Charles had the highway built between the late 1600s and early 1700s. It provided mail delivery, trade access, and a major travel route between all the colonies. Because New Jersey sat between Philadelphia and New York City and was close to the slave states of Delaware and Maryland, many Underground Railroad routes passed through the state.

Because King’s Highway connected South Jersey directly to the northern parts of the state, it frequently brought freedom seekers into contact with Quaker abolitionist networks. These communities provided critical shelter, clothing, and transportation before seekers moved onward. People traveled by stagecoach over turnpikes such as the Princeton and Kingston Turnpike and the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike. Avoiding turnpikes when fleeing slavery was difficult, but they could hide in wagons and coaches for short distances.

Between the late 1700s and the 1830s, states granted charters to private companies to improve specific sections. These companies erected turnpikes and charged tolls every few miles to fund upkeep. Introducing Macadam roads (paving method using layers of small, compacted crushed stone) through Pennsylvania and New Jersey) cut mud and travel times. Stagecoaches could maintain speeds of 8 to 10 miles per hour, cutting the trip between Boston and New York from over a week to less than 2 days. A booming infrastructure of roadside taverns, inns, and livery stables flourished along the route to feed travelers and quickly swap out exhausted horse teams. The condition and relevance of the road varied widely by geography.

The 1830s marked the beginning of the end for the highway’s dominance. The decade saw the birth of the American commercial railroad, with lines like the Camden and Amboy in New Jersey opening in the early 1830s. Long-distance travelers quickly abandoned the bumpy, expensive turnpikes in favor of the speed and comfort of train travel.