Eric Jaffe

I've lived most of my life in proximity to the Boston Post Road, which is in fact more than one road and it goes by many names such as Main Street, King's Highway, Centre Street, Washington Street, Putnam Avenue, or simply US 1 and US 20. Jaffe's history goes back to the colonial era when trails first trod by indigenous peoples were adapted to allow post riders to carry the mail between Boston and New York City. The roads were improved by the likes of postmaster Benjamin Franklin and later by private turnpike companies. By the time of the United States' independence the road carried regular stagecoach service.

The road continued to be adapted to the times and in the 19th century was lined with streetcar tracks while railroads were built parallel or sometimes right on to the road itself. This grew into the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad which Jaffe paints as particularly corrupt (but that was true of all the railroad companies). A late 19th-century revival of interest in "Good Roads" was not spearheaded by the arrival of the new motorcar, but by bicycle manufacturer Albert Pope who advocated for paved roads for cycling.

Nevertheless, the new automobiles soon swamped the Old Post Road which was appropriately assigned to be part of route number US 1 in the new highways system that debuted in 1925. Efforts to alleviate traffic lead to the Post Road being paralleled by parkways in the 1920s-30s and then overlaid in many places by the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. Jaffe ends the book with an account of his own cruise along the Boston Post Road as it survives today, which is a depressing story of traffic congestion, strip malls full of retail chains, and very little evidence of the road's august history.

Apart from the story of the road itself, Jaffe includes various stories that keep the narrative interesting. These include:

• postmen, printers, and the Stamp Act


• General George Washington's celebratory ride after the Revolution


• Samuel Slater's mill and the industrialization of New England


• the contest for primacy between the Post Road and Broadway in Manhattan (Broadway won)


• Abraham Lincoln's 1860 presidential campaign to cities along the road


• P.T. Barnum's surprisingly progressive legislative career


• the highway revolt against the Southwest Corridor in Boston in the 1960s and 1970s

I kind of found Jaffe's writing tone to be too "jokey" at times, and his writing about the native peoples of America lacked cultural competency. But there was nothing about the work that made me doubt the quality of his scholarship. The King's Best Highway proved to be an illuminating way of relating the history of New York and New England by linking the stories together with the history of this most important road.… (plus d'informations)