toll roads

     Some of the older roads in this part of the country ( Southeastern Pennsylvania ) are called "pikes". They were once toll roads, built as profit-making enterprises. A group of investors formed a company, which built a road. Then they hired someone to collect a fee for the use of the road.  The venture was meant to pay expenses and return a profit, eventually. You can still see a couple of 18th century houses that look like they must have been built for the toll keeper. They are set right on the road, without even a foot to separate them from passing cars. The roads may have been widened, but the other old houses are not close to the road, as these are, and the roads could not have been widened much--they are barely two-lane roads now. 
     I don't know what the fee for using the road was--a matter of a few cents, which seems quite a bargain, in modern money. The few cents must have been an expense to be considered in 18th-century Pennsylvania, for many people. Old records such as the cost to use a toll road are how we learn about money in the past--how people got money, how much money most people had, and what the necessities of life cost at the time. Without a historical understanding of money and finances, much of the record of the past wouldn't make sense to us today.