The Logansport and Burlington Turnpike, and Indiana’s Toll Road War

Abstract

On April 3, 1900, a mob of masked men blew up a toll house along the Logansport and Burlington Turnpike in Carroll County, Indiana. The story made news across the state and the nation. Bruce Monroe examines how a fourteen-mile “local road” turned into “a weapon in the commercial rivalry” between two towns in western Indiana. Across the Midwest in the late nineteenth century, toll roads—many built by counties to allow farmers better access to local markets—gave way to free gravel roads, railroads, and, by the turn of the century, interurban lines. The competing interests of county commissioners, business owners, developers, farmers, and taxpayers created disputes that played out in local newspapers and sometimes issued in violence.