Fayetteville and Western Plank Road
Encyclopedia
Plank road
A plank road or puncheon is a dirt path or road covered with a series of planks, similar to the wooden sidewalks one would see in a Western movie. Plank roads were very popular in Ontario, the U.S. Northeast and U.S. Midwest in the first half of the 19th century...
from Fayetteville, NC to the Moravian
Moravians (ethnic group)
Moravians are the modern West Slavic inhabitants of the historical land of Moravia, the easternmost part of the Czech Republic, which includes the Moravian Slovakia. They speak the two main groups of Moravian dialects , the transitional Bohemian-Moravian dialect subgroup and standard Czech...
settlement at Bethania, NC. The road was constructed from 1851-1852 using funds raised by boosters and accompanying funds provided by the state of North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
. During the mid-1850s, business on the toll-based road provided as much as $27,419.77 income in one year, but by the turn of the decade income no longer met maintenance costs and the road was unprofitable.