From Indian Path to Asphalt Highway

From Indian Path to Asphalt Highway. . , Today, LHT users crossing U.S. Route 206 need to stay alert to traffic, crosswalks and stoplights. There is not much time to reflect on this unassuming intersection with Province Line Road. Stepping onto the pavement, however, is to walk onto one of the most ancient and historic roads in the State of New Jersey. Open your imagination and listen carefully – you might hear moccasins quietly stepping through the forest, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, the jangling of harnesses or the ah-oo-gah of a Model T horn., U.S. Route 206 traces its origins to an ancient Native American trail. For thousands of years, this trail crossed the “waist” of New Jersey from the Falls of the Delaware at modern-day Trenton to a crossing point on the Raritan River at New Brunswick. Later historians dubbed the Indian path the “Assunpink Trail,” appropriating an Algonquian word for “a rocky place that is watery.”, Indian guides led Dutch traders over the trail in the 1640s and l650s, and later settlers followed it to lands they claimed for plantations and farms, gradually converting the Indian path into a wagon road. Over the years, the road went by many names, including the Trenton to Amboy Road, the Great Road and the Old Dutch Road., The Upper Road, however, was the highway’s best-known name, which differentiated it from the Lower Road running further to the southeast between Burlington and South Amboy. Both the Upper and Lower Roads were “King’s Highways,” a designation given by the royal government to colonial roads of permanent importance., In 1744, Peter Kalm, a Swedish traveler and naturalist, described this stretch of the Upper Road as “12 miles of a very pleasant road well lined with houses of entertainment.” The entertainment - food, drink, conversation and lodging – was found at taverns, including one known as the Fiva du Clos southwest of the Province Line Road intersection. For more than 100 years, stagecoaches carried passengers between stops along the Upper Road, which served as the main route between New York City and Philadelphia., The coming of turnpikes, canals and railroads in the 19th century diminished the importance of the Upper Road between Princeton and Trenton. Two turnpikes – modern U.S. Route 1 and Princeton Pike – bypassed Maidenhead (Lawrenceville) in 1804 and 1807 respectively. For the next century, the Upper Road functioned mostly as a “free” route for farmers and waggoneers avoiding tolls and shipping fees. The automobile injected new life into the Upper Road as a link in the transcontinental Lincoln Highway in 1913. New Jersey officially designated the Princeton to Trenton segment as U.S. Route 206 in 1927, a number it carries to the present day., The King’s Highway between Lawrenceville and Kingston was listed in the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic places in 2000 as the best-preserved portion of the historic highway., (Captions) , . Province Line Road takes its name from a boundary, also referred to as the Keith Line in this colonial map, separating the provinces of West and East Jersey (G. Bancker, A Map of the Road from Trenton to Amboy, 1762, copied from a survey by John Dalley, 1745). , . Stagecoaches traveling the Upper Road carried out a robust competition for common carriage between points in northern New Jersey and Philadelphia (The Freeman's Journal or The North American Intelligencer, February 1, 1786). , . By the turn of the 19th century, as shown by this highway map of 1804, Province Line Road formed an established intersection along the King's Highway, but the line’s true crossing of the latter road lay almost a third of a mile to the northeast (“The Main Road from Philadelphia to New York,” The Traveller’s Dictionary, 1804). , . View looking northeast toward Princeton from this intersection on October 14, 1946. The frame structures supported billboards. The highway markers just before the telephone pole identify U.S. Route 206 and New Jersey State Highway 27 (Maxwell Collection, Rubenstein Library, Duke University). , . Background image: Stony Brook Bridge, a landmark since 1791, is located a little over one mile3 northeast of here (Princeton Historical Society), Content development by Hunter Research, Inc. Graphic design by Douglas Scott , History Along the LHT Learn more by visiting lhtrail.org/history