Can you imagine paying a toll to get from Summertown to West End? Let’s travel through time on the Central Turnpike.

The Turnpike, which runs from West End Fire Hall to Henryville to Summertown in Lawrence County, was originally a portion of a road built by a private corporation for the purpose of charging travelers a fee for its use.

Chartered in 1837 (but most of the route visible here on Rhea’s 1832 map of Tennessee), the Central Turnpike was a privately-owned toll road that went from Mount Pleasant, through northwest Lawrence County, to the Waynesboro Road, which travelers could then take to the Tennessee River in Clifton. On February 15, 1840, the Nashville ‘Republican Banner’ reported that “the most difficult part of the Columbia Central Turnpike, to the Tennessee River, is made and now travelled upon.”

The Turnpike was used extensively by both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, including a skirmish in November 1864 between retreating Union soldiers and Forrest’s advance-guard during the Nashville Campaign. Union soldiers who died in this skirmish on the Turnpike were buried in Summertown Cemetery, and many of their markers are still there today. Captain James Littleton Cooper recorded of the Turnpike in his wartime diary that “…in a day or two began to see evidences of the Yankees, in the dead horses and men along the road, where Forrest’s cavalry had been skirmishing with them.”

This wartime history was memorialized in 2005 when the Turnpike was dedicated as the “Army of Tennessee Memorial Highway” in a ceremony which included state representative Joey Hensley.

According to local historian Bobby Alford, in his “History of Lawrence County,” some of the tolls for traveling the Central Turnpike were as follows:

* Footmen (each person traveling on foot)….. 6 1/4 cents

* Each man and horse….. 12 1/2 cents

* Each chair-horse (single buggy)….. 25 cents

* Each four-wheeled riding carriage….. 50 cents

* Every cart with horses….. 25 cents

* Every wagon and team…… 50 cents

* Each led horse or work ox….. 6 1/4 cents

* Each head of neat (domesticated) cattle….. 2 cents

* Each head of hogs and sheep….. 1 cent