A beautiful drive along the Pennsylvania Turnpike on the way to Richmond in March.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a toll highway operated by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. A controlled-access highway, it runs for 360 miles (580 km) across the state. The turnpike begins at the Ohio state line in Lawrence County, where the road continues west into Ohio as the Ohio Turnpike. It ends at the New Jersey border at the Delaware River–Turnpike Toll Bridge over the Delaware River in Bucks County, where it continues east as the Pearl Harbor Memorial Extension of the New Jersey Turnpike.
The highway runs east–west through the state, connecting the Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia areas. It crosses the Appalachian Mountains in central Pennsylvania through four tunnels. The turnpike is part of the Interstate Highway System; it is designated as part of Interstate 76 (I-76) between the Ohio border and Valley Forge, I-70 and I-76 between New Stanton and Breezewood, and I-276 between Valley Forge and the New Jersey border. The road uses a ticket system of tolling between the Warrendale and Delaware River Bridge toll plazas. An additional eastbound toll plaza is located at Gateway, near the Ohio border. E-ZPass, a form of electronic toll collection, is accepted at all toll plazas.
History
During the 1930s the Pennsylvania Turnpike was designed to improve automobile transportation across the mountains of Pennsylvania, using seven tunnels built for the abandoned South Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1880s. The road opened on October 1, 1940[2] between Irwin and Carlisle as the first long-distance limited-access highway in the United States, leading to the construction of other limited-access toll roads and the Interstate Highway System.
Following World War II, the turnpike was extended east to Valley Forge in 1950 and west to the Ohio border in 1951. In 1954, the road was extended further east to the Delaware River. The mainline turnpike was finished in 1956 with the completion of the Delaware River Bridge. During the 1960s an additional tube was bored at four of the two-lane tunnels, while the other three tunnels were bypassed; these improvements made the entire length of the highway four lanes wide. Improvements continue to be made to the road: rebuilding the original section to modern standards, widening portions of the turnpike to six lanes, and adding interchanges.
