I'm conducting research on early road networks in New Brunswick, Canada. Many of the Legislative Journals from the 1800s talk about "turnpiking" with respect to road construction and maintenance. Here's a couple of examples:
I know that a turnpike is a toll-road, but the way that it's worded in these documents, it sounds more like something to do with construction.
Any insight would be appreciated.
Although the word is now used to represent a toll road, like the Ohio Turnpike, a turnpike was once also the thing that made the road into a toll road: a gate that pivoted on a post to block the road to traffic or let it pass ( so, turn+ pike= a pivoting long pole ) Turnpiking ought to mean making and installing or at least renewing toll gates.
42 rods is only about 230 yards, and it does seem odd that there might be a gate at each end of that short distance. Tollgates on the National Road in the US would be about one every 10 to 20 miles. But there was always a tendency for the penurious to jump off the road and cut across country and avoid the toll gates ( in Ohio, where the land flattened, this resulted in the National Road in many places being paralleled by rough dirt roads), so it's possible that the word here implied some sort of barrier or fencing to prevent that.