by Bob McCarthy for The Lambton Shield

(2012) The Florence and Sarnia Plank Road was built at a cost of forty thousand dollars, half from Sarnia, with the rest put up by Malcolm Cameron, George Durand and other gentlemen, using their own money. Started in late fifty-eight, the new road was finished by summer of fifty-nine.

The main reason for the planked road was to get the newly found oil from Oil Springs and beyond on to Sarnia where it would be refined at the Black Star Refinery.

Let’s travel by stage along the new plank road with Samuel Johnston, operator of one of the stores that sprung up in Oil Springs to serve the needs of the many men who came to this new community to hopefully claim their share of the fame and fortune of this booming town.

New Plank Road – 1870’s

Since I last travelled this way near a year ago, the owners of the road have added three toll gates, the first just outside Sarnia’s limits. The second is at a small community building up because of the planked road. It is called Smithville and be near the Lucasville Post Office. The third toll station is at the eighth line of Moore Township.

Signs at each toll booth indicate that tolls of five to fifteen cents must be paid, depending on destination, type of vehicle, contents, number of passengers on the vehicle. I noticed on the sign that ministers were allowed to travel along the Plank Road without paying a toll. Guess Uncle Joe would like that.

This last trip has been a real delight, especially the return run. I travelled first class, meaning I got to sit inside instead of outside on this stage run from the livery stable of Pette, Guston and Company.

We started out ‘bout mid-day yesterday. The stage had pulled up right in front of our hotel. I was just standing waiting patiently with others when I heard a voice call out “All of you folks. Listen up here. By my watch, it is now the hour of twelve and thirty-five in the afternoon. This here stage will be aleavin’ in twenty-five minutes by my watch.

“Now, all who will be aboardin’ this stage, bring your luggage and ticket to me and I will pass you on to board. Now, who is first?”

It was the voice of the stage driver, a tall wiry man wearing a ten gallon Stetson and leather chaps. Exactly twenty-five minutes later, the stage pulled out. Inside were three men, including myself, all sitting facing forward and three ladies facing to the rear.

Not right to judge people, but one of the ladies looked to me like she might be heading to the Springs to pursue employment at one of the entertainment palaces.

For the first part of our ride, going out of Sarnia, the stage moved at a slow but still jostling pace.

It was about an hour and a half before we reached the first tool booth.

Since I was sitting on the right side by a flap covered opening. I could hear the man at the toll booth ask when we stopped at the gate. “What do you carry and how many passengers do you have on board.”

The stage driver answered, “I have three gentleladies and two gentlemen and one clergyman in board and I have eight in total plus myself on top here. Alls I be carrying is their luggage and mail and goods, no animals and no fowl.”

The man seated next to me inside the coach asked what was happening.

I turned in his direction and said “You have probably not travelled along this route. The driver must pay a toll for all living things on this stage, whether they be people or animals or fowl, except for the Reverend here, of course. No charge for ministers of the Lord. The driver will have to pay tolls here and again at each of the other two toll booths.”

The man then handed me a card showing that he was one Horace Greebs, a financier headed for the oil fields of Oil Springs

“Sir,” he said “I have in recent months been reading so much about the Village of Oil Springs in the Toronto Globe. You know, sir, that I am acquainted with George Brown, the owner of the Globe. He is the same man who founded Bothwell back in eighteen fifty-four.

“When I spoke to him about a month ago, he suggested that there might be both an opportunity and a need for someone such as myself to assist miners with financing.

“Why, I have here a recent article about Oil Springs. You might like to read it.”

As he handed me the article, he continued “Sir, are you from there?”

I replied “Indeed, Mister Greebs. I am from there, have been since fifty-eight. A moment please while I read what was printed in the Globe?”

“Sir, it was written but two weeks ago. Please read it for yourself.”

The concluding paragraphs of a rather long article read:

The fact has been established that it is almost impossible to bore a deep hole without finding oil. Professor S. S. Cutting, whom we have previously quoted, alludes to this subject, as follows: ‘The larger number of wells in the district are near the creek; but the valuable wells scattered here and there on the level, with no manifest signs of preference of one spot over another, demonstrate that the district is saturated with oil, and that it is likely to be found, seek it where you will. At the back door of the hotel at which I stopped, they undertook to dig a well for water, and to their great consternation it yielded oil.’

Just as the stage once again began to move forward, I commented that perhaps the story was just a tad exaggerated.

Knowing from experience that it would be most difficult to carry on a conversation with the stage moving, I passed the article back and said to him “Mister Greebs, we will talk further when the stage stops once again.”

As the stage picked up speed, I thought to myself what a wonderful form of conveyance this is. At the front, I knew, there were four strong stout looking horses, all black, obviously matched for their endurance and their ability to pull in unison.

Following the leads of their reins back to the top of the coach, I knew there was a driver who, once we got on to the open road, would tightly hold on to those reins, controlling his team while he would no doubt be bouncing up and down on the wide plank with no back support that served as his seat.

Behind him, on top, were eight other men travelling second class, also holding on for their lives. Further back, piled high in the bin on the back of the stage, was luggage belonging to the passengers plus bags of mail and local goods being carried on to the Post Office and merchants in Oil Springs.

The toll must now have been paid. We were once more moving. As we picked up speed, I knew that the four black steeds would be pulling in unison. I could hear the wheels squeaking on their axles, the snap of the reins and harness crackling, the eerie sound of the springs creaking, the whole box of the stage groaning as it was jostled back and forth through a quick up and down motion as we passed over each plank spread across the road.

An Indian I had spoken to several months ago said that a stagecoach looked to him like a small house being pulled over bumps by the horses.

Then, quietly, in as few words as possible, he told me that we would be better off and probably a lot safer travelling in a saddle or on a travois pulled by a horse just like his people.

When I pointed out to him that the stage could move us a lot faster, his only comment was “Why must you go so fast? Why do you not slow down and enjoy your life?”

As I smiled at the recollection of his question, all of us bounced up and down, right and left.

The stage jounced and it quivered. It quaked and it swayed. It floundered and it tumbled.

No two motions seemed the same as it bobbed up and down on its leather springs, moving at what seemed to me then to be such a great rate of speed.

What the six of us were riding in was just a wooden box about four feet wide and four and a half feet high on the inside, padded leather seats the only protection we had to at least absorb some of the effect of the many bumps.

All six of us, crammed tightly inside this bouncing, shaking, lumbering box, were doing our individual best as each one of us tried desperately to remain seated without jostling one another.

The three ladies held kerchiefs to their noses trying to mitigate the effect of the dust entering in to the carriage through flopping flaps of leather mounted on the doors to cover the window openings.

It was nearly five hours before we approached Lucasville, only about five miles from the hotel in Sarnia. The reason we took so long was that we had to slow down and pull off onto side-offs at least twelve times.

Because we were travelling in the opposite direction from the tanker waggons full of oil, we had to give way each time one approached from the south.

We had dinner and stayed overnight at the Lucas House, an inn for stage travellers. It was so crowded that I had to share a room with five beds with nine other male travellers.

At dinner at the hotel that night, I was informed by our waiter that the main intersection of town offered salvation, education, cultivation and damnation, take your choice.

When I looked later, I saw that he was right. Located at the main intersection I could see a Methodist church, a public school, a farm and a saloon.

I did not visit any of them that night or in the morning before the stage pulled away just as the sun was rising. Our first stop was the second toll gate just past Lucasville.

HISTORICAL NOTES from the author: 

The Sarnia and Florence Plank Road, originally planned to run from Florence in south-east Lambton north-west through the county to Sarnia, was built in 1858-59 at a cost of $40,000.00, financed by the Sarnia and a private group including Malcolm Cameron, George Durand and others.

Oil was originally teamed by horse-drawn jumpers and scows to the village of Wyoming and from there, by train to Sarnia on the recently completed Great Western Railway and then on to the Black Star Refinery which was located at Christina and Exmouth, the same property that the abandoned Holmes Foundry still occupies.

There was a need for a more direct way to move the oil on an around the clock basis.

Their stage had journeyed through the day arriving at Lucasville, where they spent the night. Let’s rejoin Samuel Johnston, operator of a store in Oil Springs, and his fellow passengers inside the coach as they continue on their way to Oil Springs.

NewPlank Road – 1870’s

By the time we rode the rest of the way, including passing through the other toll booth, it was past dark when we arrived in the Springs.

The most exciting that happened that day was at the last toll booth at Mandaumin.

A farmer travelling in the opposite direction apparently tried to slip through without paying a toll by driving around the gate on the other side while the toll collector was figuring out our toll.

I only knew what had happened because I was holding up the flap to get some fresh air.

When I noticed, I called out to the toll collector, a Mister Frank Davidson, whose name I learned later.

The farmer was unlucky that day. It just happened that a local constable was there at the toll gate at the same time. He quickly chased after the farmer and pulled him down from his waggon.

As we watched, an argument broke out and the farmer threw a punch at the constable. When the constable tried to restrain him, the farmer picked up a pole from the bed of his waggon and swung it wildly, hitting the constable across the side of the head, drawing blood.

By now, the toll collector was helping out. Between them, they restrained the farmer and soon had him tied to one of the wheels of his own waggon.

Then the toll collector returned to his post, collected our toll and told us to move on. We never did find out what happened to the farmer. I just know he would have been better off if he had paid the five cents.

As we moved on down the plank road, the man seated next to me again today, Horace Greebs, asked “Does this type of chicanery occur often at the toll stations?”

“Don’t know about that, but I do know of at least two other incidents.”

By this time, the other three men, including the minister, and the three women inside the coach had stopped talking. All were turned his way, waiting to hear what Samuel Johnston had to say.

“There was a man,” Johnston continued. “His name was  Frank Davidson. He was the tollgate keeper at gate 2. He told me one time about a man named Dan Tyrell who got off the Plank Road on to the sideroad east of his gate, went up another sideroad and then turned back on to the Plank Road west of the first gate. Following testimony by many witnesses on each side, Tyrell was found guilty of evading payment of tolls on the toll road. He was found guilty and fined $2.00 and costs of $1.00. Bet he never did that again.

“There was also a more violent incident. William Timbers, a Sombra Township farmer, was once found guilty of assaulting Ernest Windover, son of the toll gate keeper. The evidence showed that Timbers came into Sarnia and paid no toll at the Smithville gate.

“When he returned and was challenged, the man claimed that he had thrown the nickel toll out as he went by.

“An argument led to Timbers picking up an empty milk bottle and Windover picking up a flag pole. Timbers dropped the milk bottle and grabbed the flag pole. The resulting scuffle led to a gash on the bone of the bridge of the nose of Windover. When the case went to court, it lasted nearly a full afternoon with several witnesses being examined. Sentence was reserved to allow the parties to settle damages on their own.

“All this foofurall over a nickel toll! What some people will do!”

By now, they were nearly at Oil Springs. Johnston sat back, thinking about his time in Sarnia.

While there, he had been most fortunate to meet Mister Alexander Mackenzie, their Member of Parliament for the Lambton County riding of Canada West.

He had gone in to the office of the newspaper, the Lambton Shield, where Mackenzie was the editor, to place some advertisements for his store.

When Mackenzie introduced himself, the two men had begun to talk and continued for near an hour. It was very informative. Mackenzie seemed a most interesting man to talk with. Johnston really liked him.

As he felt the stagecoach slowing, Johnston thought to himself ‘Mister Mackenzie seems to me to be a very well spoken man, but he also seems to be a very somber and dull man. I wonder if he will ever amount to anything.’

HISTORICAL NOTES from the author: 

By 1862, at least three toll gates were established, one in Sarnia at the intersection of Plank Road and Confederation, one at the townline of Moore Township and the third at the ninth line of Enniskillen.

Various tolls were charged between 5 and 15 cents, depending on the destination, type of vehicle, contents or number of passengers on the vehicle. It is interesting to note that ministers were allowed to travel along the Plank Road without paying a toll.

Before the planked road was built, thick woods covered most of the way, broken only by a path which had been worn by men, horses, mules, waggons, sleds and whatever people used to haul their goods.

Employing that same path as the main route, land was purchased, most of it farm and swampland owned by United Empire loyalist settlers. James Cox was hired as the foreman.

Trees were felled all along the way using a portable saw mill that just followed along as thousands of white oak trees were sliced into slabs six inches thick and ten feet long. After laying a bed of heavy stringers two rows deep, the white oak slabs were laid on top. Now, this road was built just ten feet wide, not wide enough for two coaches or waggons to pass.

Every half mile, there was built a second strip ten foot wide about a hundred feet in length so that a vehicle could get over to let another approaching from the other direction go by. These were known as side-offs.

Since the road was built to move oil, any waggons hauling crude north had priority and never had to move over.

The Sarnia and Florence Plank Road was planned to run further to the south-east to Florence. But, that part was never completed.

Voices of the Past: The Origin of the Plank Road

by Bob McCarthy

During the year 1866, the Sarnia-Florence Plank Road was described as “the busiest road on the continent”.

Tolls collected that year totaled $5,874. This represents about 40,000 vehicles, all horse-drawn, many of them with several teams, going in both directions.

These many travellers, both drivers and passengers, required a place to stay. There were four hotels along the road and at any hotel, from 18 to 20 teams were put up overnight.