Searight's Tollhouse

The octagonal brick tower just ahead is one of the few surviving tollhouses on the National Road, and one of only two left in Pennsylvania. It dates to the eighteen thirties, and when it was built, it sat directly in the middle of the highway with a long hinged gate stretched across the road. You paid, the gate swung open, you passed. You did not pay, you went nowhere.

The federal government built the National Road starting in eighteen eleven as a free public highway. But maintaining it proved expensive. By the eighteen thirties, Washington had decided to hand the road over to the states it crossed, and Pennsylvania converted its stretch into a toll road to fund upkeep. Similarly designed tollhouses were built at intervals along the road. Searight's is one of two that survive.

The toll collector and his family lived upstairs while the ground floor served as the collection office. Rates varied by what you brought through. A score of hogs cost less than a score of cattle. A loaded wagon paid more than an empty one. Stagecoaches carrying passengers paid a different rate altogether. Records show a constant argument between the state, which wanted revenue, and locals, who considered the tolls an outrage on a road their taxes had already built.

The tollhouse stayed in service for decades, finally closing in the early twentieth century as the automobile era made the old toll-gate model obsolete. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Standing here, you can still feel the geometry of control, the narrow point through which all commerce and migration on the National Road had to pass, and the toll keeper who decided the price of going west.