Earth & places · Inventions & technology

A 15-mile county road that built the towns it runs through

Most state highways are drawn to connect places that already exist. Part of NY 175 does the opposite: a stretch of it is the old Seneca Turnpike, chartered in 1800 and gone as a toll road by 1852, and that road is why Skaneateles and Marcellus grew where they did. Then it happened again — when the route was numbered in 1930 it ran through open country between Marcellus and Onondaga, and population and development followed the pavement. It's a compact case study in how a line on a map generates the settlement it's supposedly serving.

The turnpike embedded in this modern route was dissolved in 1852 — nearly 80 years before the highway got its number in New York's 1930 renumbering.

Read the whole of New York State Route 175 on Wikipedia

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