Description: The Lancaster Turnpike, completed in 1794, extended 62 miles from Philadelphia to Lancaster. Some 90 years later, on April 20, 1880, the section connecting the Philadelphia city line and Paoli, including the portions of the turnpike passing through Tredyffrin and Easttown, was sold to the Lancaster Avenue Improvement Association, under the leadership of Alexander J. Cassatt, then the Pennsylvania Railroad’s First Vice-President. The new purchasers rebuilt the entire seventeen miles and there is to-day probably no better macadam road in the United States, nor one more scrupulously maintained than [that of] The Lancaster Avenue Improvement Association.) This section of the toll road was operated until June 18, 1917. In this image taken by Julius Sachse in 1887, the viewer looks east or northeast at a bearded toll gatherer standing outside his small, ramshackle toll shack which stood on the north side of Old Lancaster Road near what is, in 2014, 1064 Old Lancaster Road (approximately 100 yards west of the intersection with Old Conestoga Road). Of course the shack is today long gone. - Herb Fry and Roger Thorne
