Private Highways in America, 1792-1916

FEE reports:

The notion of private highways, which would seem fantastic to our parents, was commonplace to our great-great-grandparents. Initiated in the 1790s in the growing Republic, these roads stimulated commerce, settlement, and population. During the nineteenth century more than 2,000 private companies financed, built, and operated toll roads. States turned to private initiative for much the same reason they are doing so today: fiscal constraints and insufficient administrative manpower. Knowledge of our toll-road heritage may help encourage today’s budding toll-road movement.

What Paul Krugman doesn't know about history.