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 show more 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. show less

If you have driven along Route 20 in Weston or Sudbury you may have noticed the name of the road is "Boston Post Road". Most people probably ignore it as merely a moniker tapped to prevent you from getting lost. Perhaps you, like me, thought there might be more of a story behind it. There is a bigger story and Eric Jaffe tells it in The King's Best Highway.

Jaffe's interest started in New York, questioning why there was a road called Boston in the Bronx. I traveled the Charles River in my red show more kayak; Jaffe drove the Boston Post Road in his red Mini Cooper.

The Post Road started out in colonial times as a rugged trail, barely passable by horse. As the colonies united and the revolutionary fires grew, the link between Boston and New York became even more important. Intrepid riders would ride from tavern to tavern with wax-sealed letters. The trek would take at least a week.

The Boston Post Road was actually two separate routes. There was the inland route that ran west from Boston to Springfield, then south to Hartford and New Haven, before turning to New York City. The coastal route ran southwest from Boston to Providence, then hugged the coast as it met up with the inland route in New Haven.

The linking of cities was initially not about transportation. It was about communication. It was a key route for communication between two important hot spots of the revolution.

The road eventually improved in places and coaches began moving passengers, slowly, between the cities and points in between. Then roads moved back towards disrepair as railroads blossomed. Even today, the Amtrak lines follow the paths of the Old Post Road, with an inland route through Springfield and the coastal route through Providence.

It was bicycles that revived the roads. Recreational riders were looking for the best roads to reach the countryside. The Good Roads movement was supported by the bicycle riders groups and bicycle manufacturers.

Then, the manufacturers tried putting engines onto bicycles and the age of the automobile began and its thirst was roadways was insatiable. By the 1940s the Boston Post Road was an illustration of the inadequacy of road-building. The expressway era was about to begin and emerge as the national system of interstate highways.

The King's Best Highway is a great tale of transportation in the Boston-New York corridor. Jaffe wanders off the road a bit when he over-emphasizes the importance of the road. I found the segment on President Lincoln's pre-election travels to be a traffic jam. The books ends with Jaffe's delightful telling of his own travels on the old road. It was no longer the "narrow slit of poorly groomed earth" from the colonial times. It was mostly a "gluttonous commercial wild." show less

This is a well-written and well-argued book. Unfortunately, I also found it completely soporific. As it turns out, I am just not that interested in roads. My apologies, Mr. Jaffe. It's not your book, it's me.

This is a well-written and well-argued book. Unfortunately, I also found it completely soporific. As it turns out, I am just not that interested in roads. My apologies, Mr. Jaffe. It's not your book, it's me.