BCPL History and Genealogy - Perry Hall - Roads and Turnpikes.
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Roads and Turnpikes
by David Marks
Historian, Perry Hall Improvement Association

It's hard to imagine Belair Road in its youth, when horse-pulled carriages and wagons bumped along the narrow country road to the northern wilderness. Beneath the steady drumming of wagon wheels, travelers could hear the whistling of grass blowing, the plowing of country fields, and the distant gurgling of the Gunpowder River. Transportation wasn't just movement between two points; it was an adventure, a test of slow endurance, and with the quiet beauty of the country trek came the real possibility of getting stranded in the wilderness.

The oldest of these trails is Joppa Road, an Indian path which stretched from present-day Perry Hall to Towson. It was being used as late as 1697, when Charles Hewitt testified to the county court that he saw bands of Indians near his Forge Road home. The Indians traveled west on what is now Forge, Joppa, and Old Court Roads, on their way to hunting grounds north of the village of Baltimore. They had been forced by Europeans from their hunting grounds on the Chesapeake Bay and along the Gunpowder River.

Today, this path would begin at Perry Hall's Old Forge Road, then cross to Joppa Road, and finish at Old Court Road in the Towson area. No route connects the entire trail today, rather, its pieces make up these three major roads. Throughout history, the trail has been alternately known as Court Road and Garrison Road, since the Baltimore County Rangers used it as a "garrison road" for patrolling the area. Because the path eventually linked Towson and Perry Hall with Joppa, our county seat until 1768, we now know this trail as Joppa Road.

Belair Road began as the private drive of Harry Dorsey Gough, proprietor of Perry Hall Mansion, into the town of Baltimore. The road was transformed in the Nineteenth Century, however, into a major thoroughfare for traffic traveling between Baltimore and the Jerusalem Mill in Kingsville. In 1810, convicts were used to develop Belair Road, as well as Liberty and Philadelphia Roads, and they were housed in a jail off present-day Bucks Schoolhouse Road. When improvements were finished to the road, it became known as the Baltimore and Jerusalem Turnpike.

Like modern-day highways, turnpikes had tollgates situated at strategic points to collect fares from travelers. A long pole swung horizontally from a post across the roadway. Tollgates were privately-run, with gatekeepers given free use of the gatehouse, a small plot of land, and a good salary for the day, sometimes as high as $300 annually. Perry Hall's only tollgate was at Joppa and Belair Roads, where the animal hospital now stands. The toll in 1903 was five cents for horses, ten cents for a horse and buggy, and twenty cents for a wagon and horses. Stagecoaches frequently stopped at Bishops Inn, a stone house which was demolished for the Kentucky Fried Chicken ten years ago. Barns and an icehouse were right across from the inn, and it was here that weary travelers rested for the night.

High toll rates sparked an anti-turnpike rebellion in the 1860's. Flooding in 1868 forced turnpike companies to raise their rates, sometimes as high as 60%. William Lambdin of Perry Hall claimed that a ten-mile trip to Baltimore cost a farmer $26 every year, a "heavy tax" which hurt his competition with western business. Protests often became violent, and the military was almost called out to enforce toll collection on Harford Turnpike.

By the turn of the century, private turnpikes were being replaced by streetcars and more extensive county roads. Baltimore County sold its share of the Belair Turnpike for $2,000, less than twenty years before, it had been valued at $12,000. By 1915, the newly-created State Roads Commission had acquired the turnpikes and abolished toll gates.

This was primarily because of Governor Austin L. Crothers, who had made "good roads" a central part of his campaign in 1908. Crothers pressured the General Assembly to create a State Roads Commission and appropriate $5 million for new highway construction. The county allocated its portion of the state money for the proposed Washington-to-New York road system, now known as US Route 1. While Perry Hall residents lobbied for Belair Road to share this designation, people in Carney and Parkville wanted Harford Road to become part of Route 1.

The fight was intense. A 1909 article in the Union News declared that "the Belair and Harford Road people [have] put on War Paint!" Over 200 Fullerton and Perry Hall residents gathered at St. Joseph's Church to support the Belair Road designation, while Harford Road residents held an opposition rally at Hamilton Hall. Ultimately, of course, Belair Road became part of Route 1, even though Harford Road had a greater population than Belair Road (4,690 people to only 2,240).

Bus service begin in Perry Hall in 1915, when the McMahon Brothers started a bus route from Overlea to Bel Air. Smaller buses, often called "jitney buses," were operated for a number of years.

Today, the Mass Transit Administration operates lines to Perry Hall and White Marsh. Interstate 95, the John F. Kennedy Highway, was completed in the 1960's, while a smaller spur to the Baltimore Beltway, Route 43, was finished in 1993. Belair Road remains Perry Hall's "main street," with the State Highway Administration completing major widening from 1995 to 1998.

This page is provided by the Baltimore County Public Library, Towson, Maryland USA.
The text version of this page was last revised on 26 August 2008.
The graphics version of this page was last revised on 26 August 2008.
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