Turn Pikes, Toll Roads and Plank Roads

There is a general consensus that road construction was one of the contributing factors to the transportation transformation from the 1815 to 1848 (e.g. Daniel W. Howe, What hath God wrought, Oxford 2007, in: Introduction, loc194).

There is some good research on this:

• A general paper on turn pikes and toll roads for 19th Century America.
• A specific paper on the plank road boom in New Jersey and New York during the last phase of the Antebellum, i.e. 1847 to 1853, with all the usual promises of changing the world around (and an over-expectation about canals to boot).