HCWHA US 250th GeoTour
Hancock Tollhouse
Party like it’s 1776 with the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area’s 250th GeoTour! Designed for beginner and veteran geocachers, participants will travel through time, solving puzzles and following clues to learn more about mid-Maryland’s rich history. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States, our 250th GeoTour will take you throughout Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties to sites of historical significance, including battlefields, houses of worship, museums, parks, and more!
Our tour is an opportunity to learn more about the people, places, and events that laid the foundation for our country. While supplies last, those who collect 15 or more will earn this Geotour’s limited edition geocoin commemorating the 250th. Happy hunting!
Photo by PATC GPS Rangers, C&O Canal Trust
The Town of Hancock began as a European settlement in the early 1700s as an outpost on the edge of the frontier of Maryland. By the early 19th century, its unique location along the Potomac and at the edge of the state made Hancock a prime destination for transportation innovation. The Hancock Tollhouse, built in 1820, stands today as one of the few remaining tollhouses born of the early transportation revolution, and serves as a cornerstone for our national infrastructure today.
Prior to the implementation of tolls, transportation was a laborious and unreliable task. Railroads wouldn’t be implemented in the United States for another 40 years, the C&O Canal had yet to be fully realized, and there were no viable steamboats in western Maryland. Farmers were largely responsible for road maintenance, and so crop harvesting and planting dictated repair schedules. Those traveling with wagons and horses to market had to rely on inadequate roads. Turnpikes, then, became innovations of necessity.
The Old National Road, chartered between Hancock and Cumberland in 1819 and completed in 1822, became a perfect route for turnpikes and tollhouses. Privately owned and operated, 45 toll bridge companies were chartered in Maryland alone between 1792 and 1820, and they heavily benefitted merchants, farmers, land owners, and ordinary residents. Turnpikes and toll bridges were highly regulated to support, rather than impede, the local economy. Tolls couldn’t be less than 5-10 miles apart, and exemptions, including those traveling to and from church, on family business, or members of the military, were plentiful. Tolls were largely, then, operated by public-mindedness, and became symbols of community and civic pride. The improved quality of roads facilitated movement and trade, and the accumulation of revenue allowed for an increase in infrastructure previously unheard of in the United States. Between 1800 and 1830, Maryland raised $1.5 million from tolls, but technological innovation would soon replace private enterprises.
The advancing automobile industry in the late 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the rise of progressivism, quickly made private toll roads inconvenient and obsolete, but the legacy of the Turnpike Era remains in the infrastructure we see today. The Tollhouse in Hancock, operated by the Hancock Historical Society, both documents early 19th century structures, where residences and service buildings were one and the same, and stands as a monument to the beginning of the transportation revolution.
“About Hancock: The History of Hancock, MD.” Town of Hancock Maryland. https://townofhancock.org/about-hancock/.
“Hancock Tollhouse.” C&O Canal Trust. https://www.canaltrust.org/pyv/hancock-tollhouse/.
Klein, Daniel B. and John Majewski. “Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth-Century America.” ed. Robert Whaples. Economic History Association (2008). https://eh.net/encyclopedia/turnpikes-and- toll-roads-in-nineteenth-century-america/.
“National Pike Toll House, Circa 1822.” The Historical Marker Database (2022). https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=5799.
Thanks to the following members of the Maryland Geocaching Society in placing the hides for this GeoTour: deepdish23, hunterKat, GR8Caches, Phos4s, Snurt, JediTrashPanda, and ALS Guide.
The geocache is at the given coordinates. The geocache has been approved by the Town of Hancock.